JV 6455 .R82 Ross, Edward Alsworth The old world in the new Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2015 littps://arcliive.org/details/oldworldinnewsigOOross THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Towards the New World THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PAST AND PRESENT IMMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FEB 23 19 EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D., LL.D><£ £^'fG/t. ^ Professor of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin Author of "Social Control, " "Social Psychology," "The Changing Chinese," "Changing America," Etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1914 Copyright, 1913, 1914, hy The Cextuhy Co. Published, October, 1914 PEEFACE Immigration, " said to me a distinguished social worker and idealist, **is a wind that blows democratic ideas throughout the world. In a Siberian hut from which four sons had gone forth to America to seek their fortune, I saw tacked up a portrait of Lincoln cut from a New York news- paper. Even there they knew what Lincoln stood for and loved him. The return flow of letters and people from this country is sending an electric thrill through dwarfed, despairing sections of humanity. The money and leaders that come back to these down-trodden peoples inspire in them a great impulse toward liberty and democ- racy and progress. Time-hallowed Old-World oppressions and exploitations that might have lasted for generations will perish in our time, thanks to the diffusion by immigrants of American ideas of freedom and opportunity." Rapt in these visions of benefit to belated hu- manity, my friend refused to consider any pos- sible harm of immigration to this country. He did not doubt it so much as ignore it. How should the well-being of a nation be balanced against a blessing to humanity? "Think what American chances mean to these poor people!" urged a large-hearted woman in settlement work. ''Thousands make shipwreck, other thousands are disappointed, but tens of thousands do realize something of the better, PEEFACE larger life they liad dreamed of. Who would ex- clude any of them if he but knew what a land of promise America is to the poor of other lands!" Her sympathy with the visible alien at the gate was so keen that she had no feeling for the in- visible children of our poor, who will find the chances gone, nor for those at the gate of the To-be, who might have been bom, but will not be. I am not of those who consider humanity and forget the nation, who pity the living but not the unborn. To me, those who are to come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as the masses on the other side of the globe. Nor do I regard America as something to be spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the backward lands. What if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so ? I regard it as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions and ideals, which finally may be appropriated by all men. We could have helped the Chinese a little by letting their surplus millions swarm in upon us a generation ago ; but we have helped them in- finitely more by protecting our standards and having something worth their copying when the time came. Edwaed Alswoeth Ross. The University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, September, 1914. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE THE ORIGINAL MAKE-UP OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 3 Traits of the Puritan stock — Elements in the peopling of Virginia — The indentured servants and convicts — Purification by free land — The Huguenots — The Germans — The Scotch-Irish — Ruling motives in the peopling of the NevF World — Selective agencies — The toll of the sea — The sifting by the wilderness — The impress of the frontier — How an American Breed arose — Its traits. CHAPTER II THE CELTIC IRISH 24 The great lull — The Hibernian tide — Why it has run low — Effects on Ireland — Irish-Americans in the struggle for existence — Their improvidence and unthrift — Why they lacked the economic virtues — Drink their worst foe — Their small criminality — Loyalty to wife and child — Their occupational preferences — Their rapid rise — Their rank in intellectual contribution — Celtic traits — Place of the Irish in American society. CHAPTER III THE GERMANS ' 46 Volume and causes of the German freshet — Why it has ceased — Distribution of the Germans in America— Deutschtum vs. assimilation — The "Forty-eighters" — Influence of the Germans on our farming, on our drink- ing, on our attitude toward recreation — Political tend- encies of German voters — The Germans as pathbreakers for intellectual liberty — Their success in the struggle for existence — Moderation in alcoholism and in crime — Pre- ferred occupations — Teutonic traits — Effect of the Ger- man infusion on the temper of the American people. CHAPTER IV THE SCANDINAVIANS 67 The size of the Scandinavian wave — Distribution of this element in the United States — Social characteristics — Crime and alcoholism — Occupational choices — Readiness of assimilation — Reaction to America — National con- trasts among Scandinavians — Intellectual rating — Race traits — Moral and political significance of the Scandi- navians. CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE THE ITALIANS 95 Causes of the Italian outflow — Distribution of Italians — Social characteristics — Broad contrast between North Italians and South Italians — Occupations — Agricultural settlements — Freedom from alcoholism — Gaming — Addic- tion to violence — Camorra and Mafia in America — Diffi- culties in dealing with Italian immigrants — Their mental rating — Traits of character — The Italians as a social element. CHAPTER VI THE SLAVS 120 Place of the Slavs in history — Lateness of their awaken- ing — Size of the Slav groups in America — Occupational tendencies of the Slavic immigrants — Distribution — Al- coholism — Criminality — Subjection of women — Extraor- dinary fecundity — Displacement of other elements — Resistance to Americanization — Clannishness — Social characteristics of Slav settlements — Industrial segrega- tion — Mental rating — Prospects of Slavic immigration. CHAPTER VII THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 143 One-fifth of the Hebrew race in America — "The Prom- ised Land" — Hebrew interest in free immigration — Waves of Russo-Hebrew immigration — Occupational pref- erences — Morals — Crime — Race traits — Intellectuality — Persistence of will — Gro'wth of Anti-Semitism in Amer- ica — Causes — Prospects — Why America is a powerful sol- vent of Judaism — Signs of Assimilation. CHAPTER VIII THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 168 African, Saracen and Mongolian blood in our immi- grants — The Finns — Motives and characteristics — Politi- cal aptitude — Patriotism — The Magyars — Social condition and traits — The Portuguese — Origin and voliune of the Portuguese influx — Distribution — Industrial and social characteristics — Resistance to assimilation — The Greeks — Immigration from Greece purely economic — Distribu- tion and occupational preferences — Serfdom of Greek boot-blacks — The Levantines — Racial and social char- acteristics. CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PAGE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF IJOIIGRATION . . .195 Stimulators of migration — The commercial interests be- hind the movement — Tlie new immigrant as an indus- trial tool — How tariff protection coupled with the open door augment the manufacturer's profits — Effect of the new immigration upon the cost of living, upon agricul- tural metliods — Shall tlie penniless immigrant be helped to get upon the land The utilization of foreign labor to break strikes — The foreign laborer as a hindrance to unionism Effect upon wages and conditions — Is the foreigner indispensable — Immigrant women doing men's work — Fate of the displaced American — Immigration and crises — The inevitable rise of social pressure — Who bears the brunt? CHAPTER X SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IM]\IIGRATION 228 Immigration and social atavism — Community reversions to the Middle Ages — Immigrant illiteracy and ignorance — New readers of the yellow press — The spread of white peonage — Caste cleavage — Attitude of the foreign-born toward the claims of women — Split-family immigration and the social evil — How immigration makes acute the housing problem — Why overgrown cities — Immigrants who discount our charities — The wayward child of the immigrant — Insanity among the foreign-born — Obstruc- tions to the operation of the public school — Signs of social decline — Peasantism vs. social progress. CHAPTER XI IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 259 The Hibernian domination of Northern cities — Political psychology of the Celts — Practical consequences — Immi- gration as foe to party traditionalism — Citizenship of the new immigrants compared with the old — Accumula- tion of voteless men — How this lessens the political strength of labor — Psychology of the ignorant natural- ized immigrants — How the cunning boss acquires "influ- ence" — Feudal relation between the boss and his humble constituents — Naturalization frauds — The Tammany way — The political machine — The liquor interest and the for- eign-born voter — The foreign press in politics — The cost of losing political like-mindedness — Political mysticism vs. common sense. CHAPTER XII A]MERICAN BLOOD AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD . . .282 Submergence of the pioneering breed — Growing hetero- geneity — Primitive types among the foreign-born — How CONTENTS immigration will afTpct p;ood looks in this country — Ef- fect of crossiiif!; on jicrsoinil hcauty — Stature and phys- ique of the new(M- niuiii}^raiit« — Do tliev revitalize the atocics — Are tiie immifjrants <;oo(l samples of tlieir own people — Appraisal of the (lill'erent ethnie strains in the American peo])le — Katinp of present immigrant streams — TIow immifiratinn has all'eeted tlie feeun(iity of Amer- icans — Evadinfj a (lejiradinp; competition hy race suiciy Hine Russian Jews, Ellis Island C' 11 r; . s \ . t The Survey Hindoo Immigrants CHAPTER Vn THE EAST EUKOPEAN HEBREWS IN his defense of Flaccus, a Roman governor who had squeezed" his Jewish subjects, Cicero lowers his voice when he comes to speak of the Jews, for, as he explains to the judges, there are persons who might excite against him this numerous, clannish and powerful element. With much greater reason might an American lower his voice to-day in discussing two million Hebrew immigrants united by a strong race consciousness and already ably represented at every level of wealth, power, and influence in the United States. At the time of the Revolution there were per- haps 700 Jewish families in the colonies. In 1826 the number of Jews in the United States was es- timated at 6000; in 1840, at 15,000; in 1848, at 50,000. The immigration from Germany brought great numbers, and at the outbreak of the Civil War there were probably 150,000 Jews in this country. In 1888, after the first wave from Russia, they were estimated at 400,000. Since the beginning of 1899, one and one-third millions of Hebrews have settled in this country. Easily one-fifth of the Hebrews in the world are with us, and the freshet shows no signs of sub- sidence. America is coming to be hailed as the 143 144 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW "promised land," and Zionist dreams are yield- ing to the conviction that it will be much easier for the keen-witted Russian Jews to prosper here as a free component in a nation of a hundred millions than to grub a living out of the baked hillsides of Palestine. With Mr. Zangwill they exult that: America has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale ; any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collec- tive votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution. ' ' Hence the endeavor of the Jews to control the immigration policy of the United States. Al- though theirs is but a seventh of our net immigra- tion, they led the fight on the Immigration Com- mission's bill. The power of the million Jews in the metropolis lined up the Congressional delega- tion from New York in solid opposition to the literacy test. The systematic campaign in news- papers and magazines to break down all argu- ments for restriction and to calm nativist fears is waged by and for one race. Hebrew money is be- hind the National Liberal Immigration League and its numerous publications. From the paper before the commercial body or the scientific as- sociation to the heavy treatise produced with the aid of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the literature that proves the blessings of immigration to all THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 145 classes in America emanates from subtle Hebrew brains. In order to admit their brethren from the Pale the brightest of the Semites are keeping our doors open to the dullest of the Aryans ! Migrating as families the Hebrews from eastern Europe are pretty evenly divided between the sexes. Their illiteracy is 26 per cent., about the average. Artisans and professional men are rather numerous among them. They come from cities and settle in cities — half of them in New York. Centuries of enforced Ghetto life seem to have bred in them a herding instinct. No other physiques can so well withstand the toxins of urban congestion. Save the Italians, more Jews will crowd upon a given space than any other nationality. As they prosper they do not propor- tionately enlarge their quarters. Of Boston tene- ment-house Jews Dr. Bushee testifies: Their inborn love of money-making leads them to crowd into the smallest quarters. Families having very respectable bank accounts have been known to occupy cellar rooms where damp and cold streaked the walls." ** There are actually streets in the West End where, while Jews are moving in, negro housewives are gathering up their skirts and seeking a more spotless environment." The first stream of Russo-Hebrew immigrants started flowing in 1882 in consequence of the re- actionary policy of Alexander III. It contained many students and members of scholarly families, who stimulated intellectual activity among their fellows here and were leaders in radical thought. 146 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW These idealists established newspapers in the Jew- ish-German Jargon and thus made Yiddish (Judisch) a literary language. The second stream reached us after 1890 and brought immi- grants who were not steeped in modern ideas but held to Talmudic traditions and the learning of the rabbis. The more recent flow taps lower so- cial strata and is prompted by economic motives. These later arrivals lack both the ideahsm of the first stream and the religious culture of the sec- ond. Besides the Russian Jews we are receiving large numbers from Galicia, Hungary, and Roumania. The last are said to be of a high type, whereas the Galician Jews are the lowest. It is these whom Joseph Pennell, the illustrator, found to be "people who, despite their poverty, never work with their hands ; whose town ... is but a hide- ous nightmare of dirt, disease and poverty" and its misery and ugliness *'the outcome of their own habits and way of life and not, as is usually sup- posed, forced upon them by Christian persecu- tors." OCGUPATIONS The Hebrew immigrants rarely lay hand to basic production. In tilHng the soil, in food growing, in extracting minerals, in building, construction and transportation they have little part. Some- times they direct these operations, often they finance them, but even in direst poverty they con- trive to avoid hard muscular labor. Under pres- THE EAST EUEOPEAN HEBEEWS 147 sure the Jew takes to the pack as the Italian to the pick. In the '80 's numerous rural colonies of Hebrews were planted, but, despite much help from outside, all except the colonies near Vineland, New Jersey, utterly failed. In New York and New England there are more than a thousand Hebrew farmers, but most of them speculate in real estate, keep summer boarders, or depend on some side enter- prise — peddling, cattle trading or junk buying — for a material part of their income. The Hebrew farmers, said to number in all 6000, maintain a federation and are provided with a farmers' journal. New colonies are launched at brief in- tervals, and Jewish city boys are being trained for country life. Still, not over one Hebrew family in a hundred is on the land and the rural trend is but a trickle compared with the huge in- flow. Perhaps two-fifths of the Hebrew immigrants gain their living from garment-making. Naturally the greater part of the clothing and dry goods trade, the country over, is in their hands. They make eighty-five per cent, of the cigars and most of the domestic cigarettes. They purchase all but an insignificant part of the leaf tobacco from the farmers and sell it to the manufacturers. They are prominent in the retailing of spirits, and the J ewish distiller is almost as typical as the German brewer. None can beat the Jew at a bargain, for through all the intricacies of commerce he can scent his 148 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW profit. The peddler, junk dealer, or pawn broker is on the first rung of the ladder. The more ca- pable rise in a few years to be theatrical managers, bankers or heads of department stores. More- over great numbers are clerks and salesmen and thousands are municipal and building contractors. Many of the second generation enter the civil service and the professions. Already in several of the largest municipalities and in the Federal bureaus a large proportion of the positions are held by keen-witted Jews. Twenty years ago un- der the spoils system the Irish held most of the city jobs in New York. Now under the test system the Jews are driving them out. Among the school teachers of the city Jewesses outnumber the women of any other nationality. Owing to their aversion to "blind-alley" occupations Jewish girls shun housework and crowd into the factories, while those who can get training become stenogra- phers, bookkeepers, accountants and private sec- retaries. One-thirteenth of the students in our seventy-seven leading universities and colleges are of Hebrew parentage. The young Jews take eagerly to medicine and it is said that from seven hundred to nine hundred of the physicians in New York are of their race. More noticeable is the in- flux into dentistry and especially into pharmacy. Their trend into the legal profession has been pronounced, and of late there is a movement of Jewish students into engineering, agriculture and forestry. THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 149 MORALS The Jewish immigrants cherish a pure, close- knit family life and the position of the woman in the home is one of dignity. More than any other immigrants they are ready to assume the support of distant needy relatives. They care for their own poor, and the spirit of cooperation among them is very noticeable. Their temper is sensi- tive and humane; very rarely is a Jew charged with any form of brutality. There is among them a fine elite which responds to the appeal of the ideal and is found in every kind of amehora- tive work. Nevertheless, fair-minded observers agree that certaiu bad qualities crop out all too often among these eastern Europeans. A school principal re- marks that his Jewish pupils are more importu- nate to get a mark changed than his other pupils. A settlement warden who during the summer entertains hundreds of nursing slum mothers at a country **home" says: *'The Jewish mothers are always asking for something extra over the regular kit we provide each guest for her stay." **The last thing the son of Jacob wants," ob- serves an eminent sociologist, " is a square deal. ' ' A veteran New York social worker cannot for- give the Ghetto its littering and defiling of the parks. ''Look at Tompkins Square," he ex- claimed hotly, ''and compare it with what it was twenty-five years ago amid a German popula- tion!" As for the caretakers of the parks their 150 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW comment on this matter is unprintable. Genial settlement residents, who never tire of praising Italian or Greek, testify that no other immigrants are so noisy, pushing and disdainful of the rights of others as the Hebrews. That the worst ex- ploiters of these immigrants are sweaters, land- lords, employers and "white slavers" of their own race no one gainsays. The authorities complain that the East Euro- pean Hebrews feel no reverence for law as such and are willing to break any ordinance they find in their way. The fact that pleasure-loving Jew- ish business men spare Jewesses but pursue Gen- tile girls excites bitter comment. The insurance companies scan a Jewish fire risk more closely than any other. Credit men say the Jewish merchant is often "slippery" and will "fail" in order to get rid of his debts. For lying the im- migrant has a very bad reputation. In the North End of Boston "the readiness of the Jews to commit perjury has passed into a proverb." Conscientious immigration officials become very sore over the incessant fire of false accusations to which they are subjected by the Jewish press and societies. United States senators complain that during the close of the struggle over the im- migration bill they were overwhelmed with a tor- rent of crooked statistics and misrepresentations by the Hebrews fighting the literacy test. Graver yet is the charge that these East Euro- pean immigrants lower standards wherever they enter. In the boot and shoe trade some Hebrew THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 153 jobbers who, after sending in an order to the man- ufacturer, find the market taking an unexpected downward turn, will reject a consignment on some pretext in order to evade a loss. Says Dr. Bushee: **The shame of a variety of under- handed methods in trade not easily punishable by law must be laid at the door of a certain type of Jew." It is charged that for personal gain the Jewish dealer wilfully disregards the customs of the trade and thereby throws trade ethics into confusion. Physicians and lawyers complain that their Jewish colleagues tend to break down the ethics of their professions. It is certain that Jews have commercialized the social evil, com- mercialized the theatre, and done much to com- mercialize the newspaper. The Jewish leaders admit much truth in the impeachment. One accounts for the bad reputa- tion of his race in the legal profession by point- ing out that they entered the tricky branches of it, viz., commercial law and criminal law. Says a high minded lawyer: '*If the average Amer- ican entered law as we have to, without money, connections or adequate professional education, he would be a shyster too." Another observes that the sharp practice of the Russo-Jewish law- yer belongs to the earlier part of his career when he must succeed or starve. As he prospers his sense of responsibility grows. For example, some years ago the Bar Association of New York opposed the promotion of a certain Hebrew law- yer to the bench on the ground of his unprofes- 154 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW sional practices. But this same lawyer made one of the best judges the city ever had, and when he retired he was banqueted by the Association. The truth seems to be that the lower class of Jews of eastern Europe reach here moral crip- ples, their souls warped and dwarfed by iron circumstance. The experience of Eussian re- pression has made them haters of government and corrupters of the police. Life amid a big- oted and hostile population has left them aloof and thick-skinned. A tribal spirit intensified by social isolation prompts them to rush to the res- cue of the caught rascal of their own race. Pent within the Talmud and the Pale of Settlement, their interests have become few, and many of them have developed a monstrous and repulsive love of gain. When now, they use their Old- World shove and wile and lie in a society like ours, as unprotected as a snail out of its shell, they rapidly push up into a position of pros- perous parasitism*, leaving scorn and curses in their wake. Gradually, however, it dawns upon this twisted soul that here there is no need to be weazel or hedgehog. He finds himself in a new game, the rules of which are made by all the players. He himself is a part of the state that is weakened by his law-breaking, a member of the profession that is degraded by his sharp practices. So smirk and cringe and trick presently fall away from him, and he stands erect. This is why, in the same profession at the same time, those most active in THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 155 breaking down standards are Jews and tliose most active in raising standards are Jews — of an earlier coming or a later generation. *'0n the average," says a Jewish leader, "only the third generation feels perfectly at home in American society." This explains the frequent statement that the Jews are "the limit" — among the worst of the worst and among the best of the best. CRIME The Hebrew immigrants usually commit their crimes for gain; and among gainful crimes they lean to gambling, larceny, and the receiving of stolen goods rather than to the more daring crimes of robbery and burglary. The fewness of the Hebrews in prison has been used to spread the impression that they are uncommonly law-abid- ing. The fact is it is harder to catch and convict criminals of cunning than criminals of violence. The chief of police of any large city will bear em- phatic testimony as to the trouble Hebrew law- breakers cause him. Most alarming is the great increase of criminality among Jewish young men and the growth of prostitution among Jewish girls. Says a Jewish ex-assistant attorney-gen- eral of the United States in an address before the B'nai B'rith: "Suddenly we find appearing in the life of the large cities the scarlet woman of Jewish birth." "In the women's night court of New York City and on gilded Broadway the ma- jority of street walkers bear Jewish names." "This sudden break in Jewish morality was not 156 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW natural. It was a product of cold, calculating, mercenary methods, devised and handled by men of Jewish birth. ' ' Says the president of the Con- ference of American Eabbis: "The Jemsh world has been stirred from center to circumfer- ence by the recent disclosures of the part Jews have played in the pursuance of the white slave traffic." On May 14, 1911, a Yiddish paper in New York said, editorially: "It is almost impossible to comprehend the in- difference with which the large New York Jewish population hears and reads, day after day, about the thefts and murders that are perpetrated every day by Jewish gangs — real bands of robbers — and no one raises a voice of protest, and no de- mand is made for the protection of the reputation of the Jews of America and for the life and prop- erty of the Jewish citizens." **A few years ago when Commissioner Bing- ham came out with a statement about Jewish thieves, the Jews raised a cry of protest that reached the heavens. The main cry was that Bingham exaggerated and overestimated the number of Jewish criminals. But when we hear of the murders, hold-ups and burglaries com- mitted in the Jewish section by Jewish criminals, we must, with heartache, justify Mr. Bingham." Two weeks later the same paper said: ''How much more will Jewish hearts bleed when the English press comes out with descriptions of gambling houses packed "with Jewish gamblers, of the blind cigar stores where Jewish thieves THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 157 and murderers are reared, of the gangs that work systematically and fasten like vampires upon the peaceable Jewish population, and of all the other nests of theft, robbery, murder, and lawlessness that have multiplied in our midst. ' ' This startling growth reflects the moral crisis through which many immigrants are passing. Enveloped in the husks of medievalism, the re- ligion of many a Jew perishes in the American environment. The immigrant who loses his re- ligion is worse than the religionless American because his early standards are dropped along with his faith. With his clear brain sharpened in the American school, the egoistic, conscience- less young Jew constitutes a menace. As a Jew- ish labor leader said to me, *'the non-morality of the young Jewish business men is fearful. So- cialism inspires an ethics in the heart of the Jew- ish workingman, but there are many without either the old religion or the new. I am aghast at the consciencelessness of the Luft-proletariat without feeling for place, community or nation- ahty." RACE TRAITS If the Hebrews are a race certainly one of their traits is intellectuality. In Boston the milk sta- tion nurse gets far more result from her explana- tions to Jewish mothers than from her talks to Irish or Italian mothers. The Jewish parent, however grasping, rarely exploits his children, for he appreciates how schooling will add to their 158 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW earning capacity. The young Jews liave the foresight to avoid "blind alley" occupations. Between the years of fourteen and seventeen the Irish and Italian boys earn more than the Jewish lads; but after eighteen the Jewish boys will be earning more, for they have selected occupations in which you can work up. The Jew is the easi- est man to sell life insurance to, for he catches the idea sooner than any other immigrant. As philanthropist he is the first to appreciate scien- tific charity. As voter he is the first to repudi- ate the political leader and rise to a broad out- look. As exploited worker he is the first to find his way to a theory of his hard lot, viz., capital- ism. As employer he is quick to respond to the idea of ''welfare work." The Jewish patrons of the libraries welcome guidance in their reading and they want always the best ; in fiction, Dickens, Tolstoi, Zola; in philosophy, Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel. No other readers are so ready to tackle the heavy-weights in economics and sociology. From many school principals comes the obser- vation that their Jewish pupils are either very bright or distinctly dull. Among the Russo-Jew- ish children many fall behind but some distin- guish themselves in their studies. The propor- tion of backward pupils is about the average for school children of non-English-speaking parent- age ; but the brilliant pupils indicate the presence in Hebrew immigration of a gifted element which scarcely shows itself in other streams of immigra- tion. Teachers report that their Jewish pupils THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 159 ''seem to have hungry minds." They "grasp in- formation as they do everything else, recognizing it as the requisite for success." Says a princi- pal: "Their progress in studies is simply an- other manifestation of the acquisitiveness of the race." Another thinks their school successes are won more by intense application than by natural superiority, and judges his Irish pupils would do still better if only they would work as many hours. The Jewish gift for mathematics and chess is well known. They have great imagination, but it is the "combinative" imagination rather than the free poetic fancy of the Celt. They analyze out the factors of a process and mentally put them together in new ways. Their talent for antici- pating the course of the market, making fresh combinations in business, diagnosing diseases, and suggesting scientific hypotheses is not ques- tioned. On the other hand, an eminent savant thinks the best Jewish minds are not strong in generalization and deems them clever, acute and industrious rather than able in the highest sense. On the whole, the Russo-Jewish immigration is richer in gray matter than any other recent stream, and it may be richer than any large inflow since the colonial era. Perhaps abstractness is another trait of the Jewish mind. To the Hebrew things present themselves not softened by an atmosphere of sentiment, but with the sharp outlines of that desert landscape in which his ancestors wan- 160 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW dered. As farmer he is slovenly and does not root in the soil like the German. As poet he shows little feeling for nature. Unlike the Ger- man artisan who becomes fond of what he cre- ates, the Jew does not love the concrete for its own sake. What he cares for is the value in it. Hence he is rarely a good artisan, and perhaps the reason why he makes his craft a mere step- ping-stone to business is that he does not relish his work. The Jew shines in literature, music and acting — the arts of expression — but not often is he an artist in the manipulation of materials. In theology, law and diplomacy — which involve the abstract — the Jewish mind has distinguished itself more than in technology or the study of na- ture. The Jew has little feeling for the particular. He cares little for pets. He loves man rather than men, and from Isaiah to Karl Marx he holds the record in projects of social amelioration. The Jew loves without romance and fights without hatred. He is loyal to his purposes rather than to persons. He finds general principles for what- ever he wants to do. As circumstances change he wiU make up with his worst enemy or part company with his closest ally. Hence his won- derful adaptability. Flexible and rational the Jewish mind cannot be bound by conventions. The good will of a Southern gentleman takes set forms such as courtesy and attentions, while the kindly Jew is ready with any form of help that may be needed. So the South looked askance at THE EAST EUEOPEAX HEBREWS 163 the Jews as "no gentlemen." Nor have the Irish with their strong personal loyalty or hostility liked the Jews. On the other hand the Yankees have for the Jews a cousinly feeling. Puritanism was a kind of Hebraism and throve most in the parts of England where, centuries before, the Jews had been thickest. "With his rationalism, his shrewdness, his inquisitiveness and acquisi- tiveness, the Yankee can meet the Jew on his own ground. Like all races that survive the sepsis of civili- zation, the Hebrews show great tenacity of pur- pose. Their constancy has worn out their perse- cutors and won them the epithet of ''stiff- necked." In their religious ideas our Jewish immigrants are so stubborn that the Protestant churches despair of making proselytes among them. The sky-rocket careers leading from the peddler's pack to the banker's desk or the pro- fessor's chair testify to rare singleness of pur- pose. Whatever his goal — money, scholarship, or recognition — the true Israelite never loses sight of it, cannot be distracted, presses steadily on, and in the end masters circumstance instead of being dominated by it. As strikers the Jewish wage earners will starve rather than yield. The Jewish reader in the libraries sticks indomitably to the course of reading he has entered on. Xo other policy holder is so reliable as the Jew in keeping up his premiums. The Jewish can- vasser, bill collector, insurance solicitor, or com- mercial traveler takes no rebuff, returns brazenly 164 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW again and again, and will risk being kicked down stairs rather than lose his man. During the Civil War General Grant wrote to the war department regarding the Jewish cotton traders who pressed into the South vrifh the northern armies: "I have instructed the commanding officer to refuse all permits to Jews to come South, and I have frequently had them expelled from the depart- ment, but they come in with their carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it." Char- ity agents say that although their Hebrew cases are few, they cost them more than other cases in the end because of the unblushing persistence of the applicant. Some chiefs of police will not tol- erate the Hebrew prostitute in their city because they find it impossible to subject her to any regu- lations. THE RACE LIKE In New York the line is drawn against the Jews in hotels, resorts, clubs, and private schools, and constantly this line hardens and extends. They cry Bigotry" but bigotiy has little or nothing to do with it. What is disliked in the Jews is not their religion but certain ways and manners. Moreover, the Gentile resents being obliged to engage in a humiliating and undignified scramble in order to keep his trade or his clients against the Jewish invader. The line is not yet rigid, for the genial editor of Vorivaerts, Mr. Abram Ca- han, tells me that he and his literary brethren from the Pale have never encountered Anti-Sem- THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 165 itism in the Americans they meet. Not the socialist Jews but the vulgar upstart parvenus are made to feel the discrimination. This cruel prejudice — for all lump condemna- tions are cruel — is no importation, no hang-over from the past. It appears to spring out of con- temporary experience and is invading circle after circle of broad-minded. People who give their lives to befriending immigrants shake their heads over the Galician Hebrews. It is astonishing how much of the sympathy that twenty years ago went out to the fugitives from Russian massa- cres has turned sour. Through fear of retalia- tion little criticism gets into print ; in the open the Philo-semites have it all their way. The situa- tion is: Honey above, gall beneath. If the Czar, by keeping up the pressure which has al- ready rid him of two million undesired subjects, should succeed in driving the bulk of his six mil- lion Jews to the United States, we shall see the rise of a Jewish question here, perhaps riots and anti-Jewish legislation. No doubt thirty or forty thousand Hebrews from eastern Europe might be absorbed by this country each year with- out any marked growth of race prejudice; but when they come in two or three or even four times as fast, the lump outgrows the leaven, and there will be trouble. America is probably the strongest solvent Jew- ish separatism has ever encountered. It is not only that here the Jew finds himself a free man and a citizen. That has occurred before, with- 166 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW out causing the Jew to merge into the general population. It is that here more than anywhere else in the world the future is expected to be in all respects better than the past. No civilized people ever so belittled the past in the face of the future as we do. This is why tradition withers and dies in our air; and the dogma that the Jews are a peculiar people" and must shun intermar- riage with the Gentiles is only a tradition. The Jewish dietary laws are rapidly going. In New York only one-fourth of the two hundred thou- sand Jewish workmen keep their Sabbath and only one-fifth of the Jews belong to the syna- gogue. The neglect of the synagogue is as marked as the falling away of non-Jews from the church. Mixed marriages, although by no means numerous in the centers, are on the increase, and in 1909 the Central Conference of Jewish Eabbis resolved that such marriages ' ' are contrary to the tradition of the Jewish religion and should there- fore be discouraged by the American Eabbinate. ' ' Certainly every mixed marriage is, as one rabbi puts it, "a nail in the cofiSn of Judaism," and free mixing would in time end the Jews as a distinct ethnic strain. The "hard shell" leaders are urging the Jews in America to cherish their distinctive traditions and to refrain from mingling their blood with Gentiles. But the liberal and radical leaders in- sist that in this new, ultra-modem environment nothing is gained by holding the Jews within the wall of Orthodox Judaism. As a prominent He- THE EAST EUROPEAN HEBREWS 167 brew labor leader said to me: **By blending with the American the Jew will gain in physique, and this with its attendant participation in nor- mal labor, sports, athletics, outdoor life, and the like, will lessen the hyper-sensibility and the sen- suality of the Jew and make him less vain, un- scrupulous and pleasure-loving." It is too soon yet to foretell whether or not this vast and growing body of Jews from eastern Eu- rope is to melt and disappear in the American population just as numbers of Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French Jews in our early days be- came blent with the rest of the people. In any case the immigrant Jews are being assimilated outwardly. The long coat, side curls, beard and fringes, the "Wandering Jew" figure, the furtive manner, the stoop, the hunted look, and the mar- tyr air disappear as if by magic after a brief taste of American life. It would seem as if the experience of Russia and America in assimilating the J ews is happily illustrated by the old story of the rivalry of the wind and the sun in trying to strip the traveler of his cloak. CHAPTER VIII THE LESSEE IMMIGKANT GROUPS THE immigration question is a live wire and whoever handles it may look for tingling surprises. One is a bit startled on realizing that through the "Bravas" from the Cape Verde Is- lands we are getting a new dash of black from the Senegambian tar-brush. How few are aware that a third of Sicily, from which so many immi- grants come, is chiefly Saracen in stock, so that the heredity of the Bedouin tribes of Mohamet's time is to be blent with the heredity of our pio- neering breed! Who reflects that, with Chinese and Japanese, Finns and Magyars, Bulgars and Turks, about a half a million more or less Mon- golian in blood have cast in their lot with us and will leave their race stamp upon the American people of the future? THE FINNS Our 130,000 immigrants from Finland should be counted to the Finno-Tartar branch of the Mongolian race, although since the dawn of his- tory the western Finns have intermingled with the Swedes until their blondness and cast of coun- tenance bespeak the North European. Neverthe- less, here and there among the Finns one notices 168 THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 169 that inward and downward slant of the eyes which proclaims the Asiatic. Ever since the heavy paw of the Russian bear descended on Finland, these people have been seeping into the United States. They come for liberty's sake, bring their families and expect to remain. Lovers of wood and water, they keep to the North and the Northwest and are willing to tackle the roughest land in order to become inde- pendent. As farmers they are thrifty but, if left to themselves, not particularly skillful or progres- sive. Among them survive Old-World ways, such as reaping by handfuls with a sickle and hauling hay from the field on a sleigh. With a sharp ax in his hand the Finn turns artist and will hew out a log house so beautiful as to put an American pioneer to the blush. One of the first things he builds is an air-tight bath-house in which he may steam himself by dashing water on hot stones. Practically all these immigrants are literate and they are eager patrons of night schools. In acquiring English they are rather slow. Their native ability is good, but is not considered to be equal to that of the Swedes. They are quiet and law-abiding, but litigious. With his grim inten- sity of character the Finn cannot bear to compro- mise his wrongs, but insists on all he thinks is due him. It is needless to add that a man with so much iron in his blood is honest. Like the drunken Magyar or Lithuanian the "loaded" Finn is a terrible fellow. Liquor seems to let loose in him fell and destructive im- 170 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW pulses which had been held in the leash by moral ideas. The immigrants realize their danger and the total abstinence movement is very strong amongst them. A rival current is Socialism for, strange to say, thousands of Finns, since coming to this country, have utterly lost faith in the ex- isting social order. The mining company praises the temperance" Finns but makes haste to get rid of the Socialists, although they are earnest people of a peaceable temper. Such movements reveal a thinking mood. Thanks to the long struggle with Russia, the Fin- nish mind is awake and open to ideas. Our Finns have a real thirst for education and, besides sup- porting the best of public schools, they maintain near Duluth a college of their own of 1,200 stu- dents. In all their discussions the women take an equal share with the men and, when the North- west adopts equal suffrage, the wives of the Finns will be among the first to vote. The Finns are prompt to acquire citizenship and they do not abuse the ballot. They will not vote for a fellow countiyman unless he is the fittest candidate for the office. Their civic attitude is revealed by an incident that occurred at the outbreak of the Spanish- American war. A community of agricultural Finns near Carlton, Minnesota, who had settled there in the eighties, came together after the call for volunteers and considered what they ought to do. After deliberation they concluded that in token of their gratitude for their good fortune THE LESSEB IMMIGRANT GROUPS 173 under the stars and stripes they ought to send one of their number to the war. So they picked out as their representative a stalwart, comely farm lad of twenty-three and he served through the Cu- ban campaign as Finnish champion of American institutions ! THE MAGYAES In the school of Western civilization the Finns and the Magyars sit nearer the front than any other people of Mongol speech and blood. In progressiveness the quarter of a million Magyars in our midst are as American as any immigrants we receive. A thousand years ago the Magyars, invading from Asia, conquered the Slavs in Hun- gary and settled down as a dominant race. Al- though a minority in the land, they have remained masters and rulers. Hence the Magyar immi- grant, however poverty-pinched, feels the con- stant prick of the spur of race pride. His sense of honor is high. He will not seek charity unless he really needs it. In a Magyar quarter squalor and degeneration are not to be seen. The grass and flowers about the cottages, the clean yard and the clean children proclaim the presence of a race that cannot bear to be looked down on. While the Magyars have been political and mil- itary leaders in Hungary, the masses are famil- iar with the struggle for existence. They are exploited in many ways by the Jews, who in Hun- gary have been treated more liberally than any- where else in Europe. It is not surprising, then, 174 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW that few immigrants land liere with so little money as the Magyars. Lacking the means to acquire land, they are little known in agri- culture. They go straight into the industries and four-fifths of them are to be found in the work- places of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and New Jersey. They constitute a floating labor supply shifting constantly back and forth between Fiume and New York. In recent years four Magyars have departed for every five that arrived. Their illiteracy is 11.4 per cent., a better show- ing than is made by any immigrants from eastern or southern Europe, save their cousins the Finns. They bring more industrial skill than the average Slav and their earning power is greater than that of most of the Slavic nationalities. They are loth to remain renters and in their endeavor to acquire a home they will assume burdens heavier than they can carry. Their race pride plays into the hands of the hurry-up American bosses with the result that, more than other immigrants, the Mag- yars injure themselves by overwork. In the Magyar stream the men are nearly three times as numerous as the women and two out of five of the men have left wives in the old country. This means boarding-house life, shocking con- gestion and a rich harvest for saloon and bawdy house. The Pittsburgh Magyar who earns $1.80 a day will spend ten cents of it for lodging, forty cents for food, and thirty cents for beer. The Magyars are a wine-drinking people and the im- migrants come from the farms and know nothing THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 175 of the corrosion of cities. Being high-spirited, however, they want to become American quickly, with the result that often they acquire our vices before they acquire our virtues. In the mill towns they learn to guzzle beer, carouse and leave their earnings with the caterers to appetite. Their crime record is bad. No alien is more dreaded by the police than a vengeful or drink- maddened Magyar. The proportion of alien Magyar prisoners who have been committed for murder is 35.6 per cent., higher than of any other nationality save the Russians. Their hot-headed and quarrelsome disposition causes personal vio- lence to bulk very large in their crime. In of- fenses against chastity their showing is bad, but their bent for gainful crime is slight. Most Magyars come to America with the ex- pectation of returning eventually to Hungary to live. For this reason few have acquired citizen- ship and scarcely any immigrants from south- eastern Europe show less interest in the ballot. After a trip or two home and a vain effort to set- tle down to hfe in the old country, many return to America reconciled to the prospect of ending their days here. THE PORTUGUESE Mongrelism and social decay have hurt the southwest of Europe even more than the Turk has hurt the southeast. This is why the 60,000 Portuguese in the United States are, in point of culture, behind even the Servians and the Mace- 176 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW donians. In the growing army of foreign born illiterates they constitute the van. Not even the Turks, Syrians or East Indians can vie with them. On arrival not a third are able to read and write. As we find them in the cotton mills 55 per cent, of them cannot speak English. Even after ten years or more in our midst two Portuguese out of five cannot manage the speech of the coun- try. There are two centers of Portuguese distribu- tion — southeastern New England and central Cal- ifornia. Cahfomia has 23,000 Portuguese immi- grants, Massachusetts 26,000, Ehode Island 6,000. In Boston are 1,225, in Cambridge 2,000, in Prov- idence 2,200, in Lowell 2,200, in New Bedford 4,000, in Fall Eiver 14,000. We understand why Portuguese should settle in California but what brings these olive-skinned people to chilly New England ? The answer takes us into the realm of Chance. In the beginning of a stream of immi- gration there is often romance. Then, if ever, accident counts and the venturesome individual. Just as a fallen tree on the Continental Divide may turn certain snow waters from the Pacific to the Gulf, so a practice of New Bedford whalers a lifetime ago caused the crowded Azores to over- flow into Massachusetts instead of Brazil. In the old days the whalers, after a summer cruise, touched at the Azores and took on each from 25 to 35 natives. When after two or three years of whaling they returned to New Bedford, some of these Azoreans remained and a settlement grew Roumanian Couple in Gala Attire, Youngstown, O. THE LESSEE IMMIGRANT GROUPS 179 up. To-day their quarter of New Bedford, known as ''Fayal," is very prosperous. All down Cape Cod these fishermen have well nigh replaced the sea-faring Yankees. Province- town, the spot where the Pilgrims first landed and which was settled by the purest English, seems to-day a South European town. Handsome dark- skinned Azoreans man the fishing boats, Correa, Silva, Cabral, and Manta are the names on the shops and the Roman Catholics outnumber those of any other denomination. When the bottom fell out of whaling the New Bedford Portuguese went into the cotton mills and their countrymen began coming in larger numbers. Besides the "White Portuguese" have come in multitudes of ''Black Portuguese" from the Cape Verde islands. Three thousand of them work during the season in the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts and all other pickers flee before them. They are obviously negroid, lack foresight and are so stupid they cannot follow a straight line. The real Portuguese immigrate in families and show very little money on landing. At home 70 per cent, of them were farmers or farm laborers. They know sea and soil but bring no industrial skill. If they cannot farm or fish they become day laborers, mill hands, dockers, teamsters, draymen, stationary engineers or firemen. Many of their women are in the needle trades. In the mills the Portuguese do not shine. The men earn $8.00 a week, while the rest of the for- 180 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW eign born average $12.00. Their sons and daugh- ters earn $9.50, whereas the second generation of other immigrants average $14.00. They put wife and daughters into the mill and stay out of labor unions. In eight cases out of nine they sleep three or more in a room. In Lowell, according to the government investigator, "The standard of liv- ing of the Portuguese, as judged by the number of persons per apartment, room and sleeping room, is much lower than that of any other race. ' ' In Boston, "Among the Portuguese poverty is greater and more hopeless than it is among the Jews and Italians, although there are no Portu- guese in the almshouses. Few of the Portuguese are really well to do while many are partially de- pendent because the labor of the women, who are often obliged to support the family, is too unre- munerative to ensure their independence. Por- tuguese women who have shown their low moral sense by rearing a family of fatherless children exhibit their courage and industry by sewing early and late to gain a meager living for their little ones." Although unskilled, ignorant and segregated, the Portuguese commit very little crime. Never- theless, their moral standard is in some respects exceedingly low. Says Dr. Bushee: "The idea of family morality among them is almost primi- tive, resembling that of the negroes of the South. Not only are elopements made and repaid in kind without involving further complications, but also what anthropologists call 'sexual hospitality' is THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 181 not unknown among tlie Portuguese." They ''are not free from drunkenness and thieving, but these faults are more carefully concealed among them and fewer arrests result than would be the case with other nationalities. Many of the Por- tuguese men are idle and thriftless, and some of the women are suspected of having been public women in the Azore Islands from which they come. ' ' In California the Portuguese live like the Ital- ians, but while the Italians cooperate in leasing land, the Portuguese are so individualistic that they seldom rent or own land in partnership. This has handicapped them in agricultural com- petition with the Italians and the Japanese. Their interest in education is of the feeblest. In the mill towns the percentage of Portuguese children at home is much larger than that of the English; although in this respect the showing of the Fall River Poles is much worse. No other mill people have so large a proportion of their children in the primary grades. The retardation of Portuguese school children is high. In Cali- fornia their children are taken out of school early and the few who go on are sent to business college" rather than to high school. No immigrants care so little for citizenship as the Portuguese. Of the men whose term of resi- dence entitles them to claim citizenship only 3.2 per cent, have become naturalized. At New Bed- ford only one in twenty entitled to citizenship has sought it; whereas, of the other foreign born, 182 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW over half have taken steps to gain citizenship. The Portuguese farmers of California, although prosperous, care nothing for public affairs and not half of them take a newspaper. They are in- terested only in making money, saving, and buy- ing land. Owing to their extreme clannishness assimila- tion is slow. In the city they live in a quarter by themselves; in the country they form a colony. They have their church life apart and their soci- eties center about their church. Although the thriving farmers are improving their housing and standard of living, they are inclined to be clannish, partly because Americans do not care for their society." The chief agents of assimi- lation are the children. Having mingled with other children in the public schools, the young people are taken into fraternal orders and share the social life of the community. Moreover, the parents unconsciously raise their standard of liv- ing through their efforts to gratify the wants in- spired in their children by contact with school- mates coming from better homes. If the second generation are soon to be segregated in parochial schools, as are the children of the Poles and the French Canadians, this happy assimilation of the Portuguese through their children will be checked. THE GKEEKS Practically all our 150,000 Greeks have joined us in the course of a decade and a half. The im- THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 183 migrants are mostly young men and the propor- tion of females is negligible. Fugitives from oppression always bring their families; so that this stream almost without women is the clearest proof that the immigration from Hellas is purely economic. The Hellenic Government is demo- cratic and popular, military service is slight and there is no religious or political oppression. What has happened is that the huge American orb has swum within the ken of a little people about as numerous as the population of New Jer- sey and the larger mass is exerting its solar at- traction. The peasant living on greens boiled in olive oil, who eats meat three times a year and keeps without noticing it the 150 fasting days in the Greek calendar, has sniffed the flesh pots of America. Hence a wild-fire exodus which has devastated whole villages and threatens to deplete the labor force of the kingdom. Says the emigrant when questioned as to his motive: "It is hard to make a living here. America is rich, I can make more money there. It is the money." "Money" is the keynote of Greek immigration. Flashy strangers have gone about talking with the peasant in his furrow and the shepherd on the hillside, exciting their imagination as to the wonders of America and smoothing out the difficulties in the way of migrating. In the earlier days of the move- ment one man made $50,000 a year from his network of agencies selling tickets and advancing passage money on a mortgage. The letter to the 184 THE OLD WORLD IX THE NEW home folks, written by the Greek who has found footing in Lowell or Chicago and which is read by or to every one in the \'illage, has been seized upon by money-lenders and they have lost no op- portunity to encourage both the writing and the wide circulation of such epistles. The result is that, in the words of Professor Fairchild the clos- est student of this immigration, "The whole Greek world may be said to be in a fever of emi- gration. From the highlands and the lowlands of the Morea, from Attica, Thessaly and Euboea, from Macedonia, Asia Minor and the Islands, the strong young men with one accord are severing home ties, leaving behind wives and sweethearts and thronging to the shores of America in search of opportunity and fortune." "America is a household word in almost every Greek family," "Greek immigrants know to just what place in the United States they are going and have a very definite idea of what work they are going to do." Although there are 10,000 Greek mill hands in Lowell, there is a strong tendency for the Greeks in America to take to certain lines of business, such as candy-kitchens and confectionery stores, ice-cream parlors, fruit carts, stands and stores, florist shops and boot-blacking establishments. This is due to the fact that this catering to the minor wants of the public admits of being started on the curb with little capital and no experience. Once his foot is on the first rung, the saving and commercial-minded Greek climbs. From curb to stand, from stand to store, from little store to big THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 187 store, to the chain of stores, and to branch stores in other cities — such are the stages in his upward path. As the Greeks prosper, they do not venture out into untried lines, but scatter into the smaller cities and towns in order to follow there the few businesses in which they have become expert. If the immigration from Hellas keeps up, in twenty years the Greeks will own the candy trade of the country, the soda fountains and perhaps the fruit business. Born epicures and cooks the Greeks are going into the catering of food. In Atlanta they have 35 restaurants, in St. Louis 26, in Pittsburgh 25, in Birmingham 12 hotels and 14 restaurants. Although Greeks are very rarely farmers, we hear of them as fruit raisers in California, miners in Utah, laborers on the railroads and fishers on both our coasts. In the cotton mills the Greeks are on a level with the more backward national- ities. They show little mechanical ability and few have reached responsible posts. They are sober and amenable to discipline, but some em- ployers find them too excitable and unsteady to be good workers. The ugliest thistle patch we owe to Old-World seed is the serfdom of thousands of Greek boys in the shoe-shining parlors that have sprung up everywhere. In some parts of Greece the peas- ant sets his children early to work in order that their earnings may leave him free to loaf the live- long day in a coffee-house. Upon them, too, he saddles the burden of providing dowries for 188 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW their sisters. Accordingly, in certain districts, the poor send away their boys to the cities of Greece and Turkey, where they are hired out to peddlers, grocers and restaurant keepers, who treat them badly and work them unconscionably long hours. From such parents the Greek in America has no difficulty in recruiting boys whom he exploits under conditions that savor of slav- ery. In thousands of Greek shoe-shining shops are working bound boys who are miserably fed and lodged by their masters, paid $3.00 or $4.00 a week and required to turn over all tips. Often the tips alone cover the boy's wages and keep, so that his labor costs the master nothing. Seeing that from each boy the padrone makes from $100 to $200 a year, a chain of such establishments yields him a princely income. No wonder the negro bootblack and the Italian bootblack have been forced to the wall. The bound boys are on duty 15 or 16 hours a day and work every day in the year. They get in their eating and sleeping as best they can. They know no recreation. Late at night, completely exhausted, they drop with their clothes on into a bed that must suffice for four or five. Boys who have been in a city several years may learn noth- ing of it save the shop, their living quarters and the streets between. Since the padrone's game is to keep his boys dumb and blind, they are not al- lowed to talk freely with Greek customers. The moment a customer talks with a boy, ''trusties" THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 189 crowd round to listpn. No truth can be gotten from the boys concerning their age, their work or their pay. To avoid the arm of the truant officer, no Greek bound boy confesses to less than seven- teen years. They are ignorant of the rights and rewards of labor in this country and are told that, if they leave their work, they will be arrested. Even their letters home are read and censored. The effects of this servitude on the boys are shocking. They miss all schooling and years may elapse before they get their eyes open. The study of Enghsh is the first step towards emancipation ; but where work is constant they miss even this chance and young men will be found who have been shining shoes for years and feel no ambition for anytliing else. The physical ravages of such work and confinement are appalling. In their memorial to the Immigration Commission the Greek physicians of Chicago say : "Young immigrants laboring in shoeshining places for a period of upwards of two years become afflicted with chronic gastritis and hepatitis. These diseases un- dermine their constitutions, so that if they continue longer at the same work they become afflicted with pul- monary tuberculosis. Being too ignorant to take pre- cautionary measures, the disease is communicated to others by contagion." They go on to ask the Government not to allow such bound boys to land. Through this peep hole we glimpse one secret of the immigrant's sky-rocket commercial rise. 190 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW Behold Stephanos, who landed ten years ago with- out a drachma and now draws a cool thousand a month from his business and is one of our solid men! Wonderful!" exclaims the innocent American, "What stuff there must be in him! Shows, too, that the country is still full of good chances." The fact is the worthy Stephanos lolls on the backs of a hundred unseen bootblacks who are being ruined that he may prosper. When one considers how mercilessly the immigrant land- lord, banker, saloon keeper, contractor or employ- ment agent hoodwinks and fleeces his helpless fel- low countrymen, certain of the "successes" one hears of do not seem so remarkable after all. THE LEVANTINES One hundred thousand immigrants from Asiatic Turkey introduce us to certain very marked dif- ferences between the European civilization and the Asiatic. In general, these Syrians, Armen- ians, Arabs and Turks eschew alcohol, shun \^o- lence and give little trouble to the police. They are thrifty, acquisitive and self supporting. Their women folk are hedged and virtuous. Their native intelligence is beyond question, they re- spect learning and they appreciate educational op- portunities for their children. On the other hand, they tend to crowd, their standards of cleanliness are low and they are greatly afflicted with trachoma, an excludable eye disease. Their narrow range of interests throws out in ugly relief their lust of gain, especially gain THE LESSER IMMIGRANT GROUPS 193 without sweat. The Oriental attitude toward fe- males shows itself in a great difference between the sexes in illiteracy, and in the betrothal of young girls to mature men whom they scarcely know. These people love trade, particularly the individual bargain, which offers scope for what is amiably called "a contest of wits" but is really the ensnaring of the unsuspecting by the spider type. At a time when our retail commerce has happily come to the one-price" system, the lus- trous-eyed peddlers from the Levant bring in again the odious haggling trade with its deceit and trickery. That these immigrants lack physical and moral courage is conceded even by their friends. They do not settle their quarrels on the spot face to face but revenge themselves treacherously from be- hind when they get a safe chance. Their feeling that truth is a luxury not to be brought out on common occasions gives them an advantage in a commercial system which takes for granted a good deal of Anglo-Saxon straightforwardness. It needs but half an eye to see that the "business ability" attributed to the prospering dealer is often nothing but the practice of Oriental craft among the unsuspicious. As the Romans found these people at the eastern end of the Mediterra- nean, so we find them to-day, good looking, pliant, clever, sometimes brilliant, but shifty and wanting in character. When two peoples find that their standards re- pel hke oil and water, they do not care to asso- 194 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW ciate. Naturally, then, the Oriental immigrants tend to huddle in colonies in which they may live in the old way, keep their pride and spare them- selves the pains of adjustment to American ideals. Not only do such colonies check the assimilation of those who most need it, but they are apt to be nests of congestion, disease and depravity, as well as hot-beds for the propagation of false and im- practical ideas of political and social freedom. CHAPTER IX ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGBATIQN MORE and more immigration is an economic matter, a flow of men rather than of fam- ilies, seeking gain rather than religious and po- litical liberty. Those who bring anything but their hands are a very small and diminishing con- tingent. Most of the money the immigrant shows on landing has been supplied him for that purpose. In 1882, when the old immigration reached its height, the public domain was being carved up at a tremendous rate, and the home-seeker predomi- nated. When the crest of the new immigration arrived, in 1907, a quarter of a century later, free land was gone forever, and the job-seeker predom- inated. Formerly the idea of wandering oversea sprang up naturally among the intelligent and restless ; now the idea is sown broadcast by thou- sands of steamship agents and their runners. In the tavern, knee to knee with the yokels, sits the runner, and paints an El Dorado. The poor fel- lows will believe him if he tells them the trees of America bear golden leaves. When the '* Amer- ican fever" seizes upon the peasant, it is the obliging runner who suggests mortgaging his home for the passage-money or who finds a buyer for his cows. 195 196 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Common laborers who have been in America are hired to go about among the peasants, flash money, clink glasses, and tell of the wonderful wages awaiting them. The decoy thus gets to- gether a group who elect him leader and pay him so much per head to guide them to America. Lit- tle do the poor sheep suspect that their bell-wether is paid by the steamship agent for forming the group and by the employer to whom he delivers them. A forwarding business exists for sending penniless laborers to America as if they were com- mercial ware. Each leaves at home some relative under bonds that the laborer will within a year pay a certain sum as cost and profit of bringing him here. Parties, through-billed from their native village by a professional money-lender, are met at the right points by his confederates, coached in three lessons on what answers to make at Ellis Island, and delivered finally to the Pittsburgh boarding-boss," or the Chicago saloon-keeper, who is recruiting labor on commission for a steel mill or a construction gang. The emigration of 5,000 Rumanian Jews be- tween January and August, 1900, was brought about by steamship agents, who created great ex- citement in Rumania by distributing glowing cir- culars about America. One authority stated to the Immigration Commission that two of the lead- ing steamship lines had five or six thousand ticket- agents in Gahcia alone, and that there was "a great hunt for emigrants" there. Selling steer- age tickets to America is the chief occupation of CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 197 large numbers of persons in Austria-Hungary, Greece and Russia, the main sources of undesir- able aliens. In 1908 and 1909 the inflow and out- flow of steerage-passengers through our ports amounted to about a million and a half a year. Allowing an average outlay of $50 a head, we have a movement furnishing $75,000,000 of annual busi- ness to the foreign railway and steamship com- panies. That a monster of this size grows dragon claws with which to defend itself goes without say- ing. CHEAP LABOR A RAIN OF MANNA Still, it is not as cargo that the immigrant yields his biggest dividends. But for him we could not have laid low so many forests, dug up so much mineral, set going so many factories, or built up such an export trade as we have. In most of the basic industries the new immigrants constitute at least half the labor force. Although millions have come in, there is no sign of supersaturation, no progressive growth of lack of employment. Somehow new mines have been opened and new mills started fast enough to swallow them up. Virtually all of them are at work and, what is more, at work in an efficient system under intelli- gent direction. Ivan produces much more than he did at home, consumes more, and, above all, makes more profit for his employer than the American he displaces. Thanks to him, we have bigger outputs, tonnages, trade-balances, for- tunes, tips, and alimonies ; also bigger slums, red- 198 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW light districts, breweries, hospitals, and death- rates. To the employer of unskilled labor this flow of aliens, many of them used to dirt floors, a vege- table diet, and child labor, and ignorant of under- clothing, newspapers, and trade unions, is like a rain of manna. For, as regards foreign competi- tors, his own position is a Gibraltar. When the European sends his capital hither, he puts it into railroad securities yielding from four to seven per cent., thereby releasing American capital for in- vestment in the enterprises that pay from ten to thirty per cent. The foreign capitalist dares not put up mill or refinery here, because he cannot well run such concerns at long range. He may not invade the American market \\T.th the products of his mill over there, because our tariff has been designed to prevent just that thing. ENDLESS INFLOW OF THE NEEDIEST Thus, SO long as he stays in his home market, the American mill-owner is shielded from foreign competition, while the common labor he requires is cheapened for him by the endless inflow of the neediest meekest laborers to be found within the white race. If in time they become ambitious and demanding, there are plenty of "greenies" he can use to teach them a lesson. The "Hunkies" pay their **bit" to the foreman for the job, are driven through the twelve-hour day, and in time are scrapped with as little concern as one throws away a thread-worn bolt. One steel-mill superin- Sunday Roumanians, Youngstown, O. CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 201 tendent received official notice to hire no man over thirty-five and keep no man over forty-five. A plate-mill which had experienced no technical im- provement in ten years doubled its production per man by driving the workers. No wonder, then, that in the forty years the American capitalist has had Aladdin's lamp to rub, his profits from mill and steel works, from packing-house and glass factory, have created a sensational "prosperity," of which a constantly diminishing part leaks down to the wage-earners. Nevertheless, the sys- tem which allows the manufacturer to buy at a semi-European wage much of the labor that he converts into goods to sell at an American price has been maintained as "the protection of Amer- ican labor" ! THE KEW IMMIGBATION AND THE HIGH COST OF LrVTNG Between 1900 and 1910, although population grew twenty-one per cent., the output of the ten principal crops of the country increased only nine per cent. Between 1899 and 1911 the value of the average acre's output of such crops increased seventy per cent., while its power to purchase the things the farmer buys was greater by forty-two per cent. There has been a general upheaval of prices, to be sure, but the price of farm produce has risen much faster and farther than the price of other commodities. This is "the high cost of living," and it is immigration that has made this imp shoot up faster in the United States than any- where else. 202 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW As long as good land lasted, our Government stimulated agriculture by presenting a quarter- section to whoever would undertake to farm wild land. This bounty overdid farming, until, in the middle of the nineties, the cost of living had reached a minimum. With the ending of free land, the upward turn was bound to come, but the change was made more dramatic by the inpouring of ten millions of immigrants without the knowl- edge, the means, or the inclination to engage in farming. Among us there is one American white farmer for fourteen American whites, one Scan- dinavian farmer for eight Scandinavians, one Ger- man farmer for eleven Germans, one Irish farmer for forty Irish; but it takes 130 Poles, Hungar- ians, or Italians in this country to furnish one farmer. Failing to contribute their due quota to the production of food, these late-comers have ruptured the equilibrium between field and mill, and made the high cost of living a burning ques- tion. Just as the homestead policy overstimu- lated the growth of farms, the new immigration has overstimulated the growth of factories. IMMIGRANTS AND AGRICULTUEE Nevertheless, certain of the South Europeans who are upon the soil have something to show American farmers facing the problems of inten- sive agriculture. Italians are teaching their neighbors how to extract three crops a year from a soil already nourishing orchard or vineyard. The Portuguese raise vegetables in their walnut CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 203 groves, grow currants between the rows of trees in the orchard, and beans between the currant rows. They know how to prevent the splitting of their laden fruit-trees by inducing a living brace to grow between opposite branches. The black- beetle problem they solve by planting tomato slips inclosed in paper. From the slopes looking out on the Adriatic the Dalmatian brings a horticul- tural cunning which the American fruit-grower should be eager to acquire. The conversion of New Jersey barrens into berry farms, vineyards, and pepper fields, the re- clamation of muck soil in western New York, which Americans were not willing to touch, the transmutation of wild Ozark lands into apples and peaches, are Italian exploits which constitute clear gain for the country. But there are other immigrant farmers whose labors count on the wrong side of the national ledger. Not a few Slav colonies are clearing and tilling land so poor or so steep that it ought never to have been brought under the plow. The soil they have deforested will presently wash into the rivers, leaving stripped rocky slopes to grin, like a Death's-head, in the landscape. The nation will have to pay for it, just as France paid for the reckless ax work that went on under the First Republic. HELPING THE IMMIGKANT TO GET UPON THE SOIL When confronted with the undeniable evils re- sulting from the crowding of old-world peasants into American slums and factories, the opponents 204 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW of restriction urge that the trouble is with the distribution of the immigrants, there are not really too many of them, but they are congested in certain centers and industries. Then let the state or the nation take the immigrant in hand and settle him upon the soil, where there is room for him and where he yearns to be. Supply him with the best of information, guidance and super- vision and lend him a little money until he has gotten upon his feet. Successful state coloniza- tion would, no doubt, restore the balance between agriculture and manufactures and prevent the heartbreaking waste and misery resulting from the present hap-hazard, catch-as-catch-can distri- bution of immigrants among American opportu- nities. Two other consequences ought, however, to be evident; First, the policy would tend to use up the agricultural opportunities Americans may pre- fer to hold open for their children and grandchil- dren. Second, State help to the immigrant would furnish splendid advertising matter to the steam- ship companies endeavoring to fill more steerages and might soon swell the number of arrivals to a million and a half or two millions a year. If we wish to have more immigrants and to fill up this country in the briefest possible time, state colo- nization is just the way to go about it. On the other hand, once the volume of immigration has been brought under effective control, the policy of aiding the immigrant to get upon the land is heartily to be commended. CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 207 INDUSTRIAL DISPLACEMENT The facts assembled by the Immigration Com- mission shatter the rosy theory that foreign labor is drawn into an industry only when native labor is not to be had. The Slavs and Magyars were introduced into Pennsylvania forty-odd years ago by mine-operators looking for more tractable miners. Agents were sent abroad to gather up labor, and frequently foreigners were brought in when a strike was on. The first instance seems to have occurred in Drifton in 1870, and resulted in the importation of two ship-loads of Hungarians. The process of replacing the too-demanding Amer- ican, Welsh, and Irish miners with labor from Austria-Hungary went on so rapidly that by the middle of the nineties, the change was accom- plished. In 1904, during a strike in the coal-fields near Birmingham, Alabama, many South Eu- ropeans were brought in. In 1908 *'the larger companies imported a number of immigrants," so that the strike was broken and unionism de- stroyed in that region. In 1880, in the first strike in the coal-mines of Kansas, ' ' the first immigrants from Italy were brought into the fields as strike- breakers. ' ' Poles were introduced into South Cleveland in 1882 to replace strikers in the wire-mills. The meat-packing strike of 1904 in Chicago was broken with trainloads of negroes, Italians and Greeks. In 1883 the largest oil-refining company at Bay- onne, New Jersey, "in order to break the strike 208 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW among the Irish and American coopers, ... in- troduced great numbers of Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Poles." In 1887 a coal-dockers' strike was broken with Magyars, and in 1904 striking boiler- makers were replaced by Poles. The striking glass-workers in 1904 were beaten by the intro- duction of Slovaks, Italians, Poles and Magyars. During the 1907 strike in the iron-mines of north- em Minnesota, "one of the larger companies im- ported large numbers of Montenegrins and other Southeastern races as strike-breakers, while a few of the smaller companies brought into the region a number of German- Austrians. " "One mining company imported as many as 1300 of these strike- breakers. ' ' The hejira of the English-speaking soft-coal miners shows what must happen when low-stand- ard men undercut high-standard men. The min- ers of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, find- ing their imions wrecked and their lot growing worse under the floods of men from southern and eastern Europe, migrated in great numbers to the Middle West and the Southwest. But of late the coal-fields of the Middle West have been invaded by multitudes of Italians, Croatians, Poles, and Lithuanians, so that even here American and Americanized miners have their backs to the wall. As for the displaced trade-unionists who sought asylum in the mines of Oklahoma and Kansas, the pouring in of raw immigrants has weakened their bargaining power, and many have gone on to make CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 209 a last stand in the mines of New Mexico and Colo- rado. Each exodus left behind an inert element which accepted the harder conditions that came in with the immigrants, and a strong element that rose to better posts in the mines or in other occupations. As for the displaced, the Iliad of their woes has never been sung — the loss of homes, the shattering of hopes, the untimely setting to work of children, the struggle for a new foothold, and the turning of thousands of self-respecting men into day labor- ers, odd-job men, down-and-out-ers, and "ho- boes." IMMIGEANTS AND LABOR ORGANIZATIONS The dramatic unionization of the garment in- dustries in our large cities has misled the public as to the actual effect of recent immigration upon trade-unions. The fact is that the immigrants from the backward parts of Europe tend to weaken, if not to shatter, labor organizations in the fields they enter. They arrive needy and eager to get any work at almost any pay. Hav- ing had no industrial experience in the old coun- try, they lack the trade-union idea. Without our speech, and often illiterate, they are very hard to reach and to bring into line. So far as they are transients, who are not staking their future on the industry, they are loath to pay union dues and to run the risk of having to strike. It is true that the labor organizer evangelizes the alien workers 210 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW with his union gospel; but by the time one batch has been welded into a fighting force, another batch is on his hands. His work, like Penelope's web, is raveled out about as fast as it is woven. No wonder that in the cotton industry unionism has been wrecked, while, of the iron miners, less than two per cent, belong to unions. Li 1901 the United States Steel Corporation's constituent companies signed agreements with two-thirds of their 125,000 workmen, among whom the English- speaking held a dominant place. Ten years later the company signed not a single agreement with its beaten mass of Slav-Latins. There was no union with which to sign. The organizing, organ- izable Americans had been deleted from the works. No wonder that organized labor demands restriction of immigration. While the inrush con- tinues, the lines of labor will be weak, forming, breaking, and reforming in the face of the in- trenchments of capital. IMMIGRANTS AND WAGES During the last fifteen years the flood of gold has brought in a spring-tide of prices. Since 1896 the retail cost to Americans of their fifteen prin- cipal articles of food has risen seventy per cent. Wages should have risen in like degree if the workman is to retain his old standard, to say noth- ing of keeping his place in a social procession which is continually mounting to higher economic levels. We know that by 1907 wages had risen twenty-eight per cent., while retail prices were Cabin of an Austrian Iron Miner, Virginia, Minn. CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 213 rising twenty-six per cent. Evidently the work- ing man was falling behind in the social proces- sion. In the soft-coal field of Pennsylvania, where the Slav dominates, the coal-worker re- ceives forty-two cents a day less than the coal- worker in the mines of the Middle West and South- west, where he does not dominate. In meat-pack- ing, iron and steel, cotton manufacture, and other foreignized industries the inertia of wages has been very marked. The presence of the immi- grant has prevented a wage advance which other- wise must have occurred. What a college man saw in a copper-mine in the Southwest gives in a nutshell the logic of low wages. The American miners, getting $2.75 a day, are abruptly displaced without a strike by a train- load of five hundred raw Italians brought in by the company and put to work at from $1.50 to $2 a day. For the Americans there is nothing to do but to * * go down the road. ' ' At first the Italians live on bread and beer, never wash, wear the same filthy clothes night and day, and are despised. After two or three years they want to live better, wear decent clothes, and be respected. They ask for more wages, the bosses bring in another train- load from the steerage, and the partly American- ized Italians follow the American miners "down the road." No wonder that the estimate of gov- ernment experts as to the number of our floating casual laborers ranges up to five millions ! 214 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW IMMIGRANTS AND CONDITIONS OF WORK "The best we get in the mill now is greenhorns," said the superintendent of a tube mill. **When they first come, they put their heart into it and give a full day's work. But after a while they be- gin to shirk and do as little as they dare. " It is during this early innocence that the immigrant ac- cepts conditions he ought to spurn. This same mill had to break up the practice of selling jobs by foremen. In one concern the boss who sold a job would dismiss the man after a fortnight and sell the job again, while another boss in the same works would take on the dismissed man for a fee. On the Great Northern Railroad the bosses mulcted each Greek laborer a dollar a month for "interpreter." The "bird of passage," who comes here to get ahead rather than to live, not only accepts the seven-day week and the twelve- hour day, but often demands them. Big earnings blind him to the physiological cost of overwork. It is the American or the half-Americanized for- eigner who rebels against the eighty-four-hour schedule. When capital plays lord of the manor, the Old World furnishes the serfs. In some coal districts of West Virginia the land, streets, paths, roads, the miners' cabins, the store, the school, and the church are all owned and controlled by the coal company. The company pays the teacher, and no priest or clergyman objectionable to it may re- main on its domain. One may not step off the CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 215 railroad's right of way, pass through the streets, visit mine or cabin, without permission. There is no place where miners meeting to discuss their grievances may not be dispersed as trespassers. Any miner who talks against his boss or complains of conditions is promptly dismissed, and ejected from the 35,000 acres of company land. Hired sluggers, known as the ' ' wrecking-gang, ' ' beat up or even murder the organizer who tries to reach the miners. No saloon, gambling-hall, or bawdy- house is tolerated on company land. Even the beer wagon may not deliver beer at houses to which the superintendent objects. It is needless to add that the miners are all negroes or foreigners. IS THE FOREIGNER INDISPENSABLE? After an industry has been foreignized, the no- tion becomes fixed in the minds of the bosses that without the immigrants the industry would come to a standstill. **If is wasn't for the Slavs," say the superin- tendents of the Mesaba Mines, *'we couldn't get out this ore at all, and Pittsburgh would be smoke- less. You can't get an American to work here un- less he runs a locomotive or a steam-shovel. We 've tried it ; brought 'em in, carloads at a time, and they left." "Wouldn't they stay for three dollars a day?" I suggested, ven if two dollars and ten cents is n't enough?" "No, it 's not a matter of pay. Somehow 216 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Americans nowadays aren't any good for hard or dirty work." Hard work ! And I think of Americans I have seen in that last asylum of the native born, the Far West, slaving with ax and hook, hemng logs for a cabin, ripping out boulders for a road, dig- ging irrigation-ditches, drilling the granite, or timbering the drift — Americans shying at open- pit, steam-shovel mining! The secret is that with the insweep of the un- intelligible bunk-house foreigner there grows up a driving and cursing of labor which no self-re- specting American will endure. Nor can he bear to be despised as the foreigner is. It is not the work or the pay that he minds, but the stigma. This is why, when a labor force has come to be mostly Slav, it will soon be all Slav. But if the supply of raw Slavs were cut otf, the standards and status of the laborers would rise, and the Americans would come into the industry. Some bosses argue for a continuous supply of green foreigners because the sons of the immi- grants are above their fathers' jobs." A strange industry this! Britaui's iron industry is manned by Britons, Germany's by Germans, but we are to believe that America's iron industry is an exotic which can attract neither native Ameri- cans nor the sons of immigrants. The truth is that the school and other civilizing agencies have turned Michael's boy not against hard work, but against the contempt with which his father's kind Photograph by Townsend. Courtesy of The Survey Polish Girls Washing Dishes under the Sidewalk in a Chicago Restaurant. Tlie only Light is Artificial CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 219 of work is tainted. But for the endless stream of transients with their pigsty mode of life, their brawls and their animal pleasures, the stigma on the work would vanish, and the son of the immi- grant would be willing to inherit his father's job. IMMIGRANT WOMEN DOING MEN'S WORK While milHons of women are being drawn from the home into industry, the popular ideal of womanhood serves as a precious safeguard, turn- ing them away from coarsening occupations which might rob them of health or youth or refinement. But this ideal, which is higher among the Amer- ican working-men than among the workers of any other people, is menaced by the new immigrants, with their peasant notions of womanhood. The Slavs and the Italians are not in the least queasy about putting their women into heavy and dirty work, such as core-making, glass-grinding, and hide-scraping, which self-respecting American girls will not touch. The employer realizes this, and continually tries these women in male occu- . pations, with the object of substituting them for men, beating down men's wages or breaking a men's strike. Engaging in such masculine work not only prevents immigrant women from rising to the American woman's sense of self-respect, but it hinders their men from developing the American man's spirit of chivalry. What is more, the extension of woman's sphere on the wrong side undermines the native standard of 220 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW ■womanliness, so that native girls are perhaps be- ing drawn into work that denies them refinement and romance. WHAT BECOirES OF DISPLACED AMEEICAXS Does the man the immigrant displaces rise or sink? The theory that the immigrant pushes him up is not without some color of truth. In Cleve- land the American, German, and Bohemian iron- mill workers displaced within the last fifteen years seem to have been reabsorbed into other growing industries. They are engineers and firemen, bricklayers, carpenters, slaters, structural iron- workers, steam-fitters, plumbers and printers. Leaving pick and wheelbarrow to Italian and Slav, the Irish are now meter-readers, wire- stringers, conductors, motormen, porters, jani- tors, caretakers, night-watchmen, and elevator- men. I find no sign that either the dis- placed workman or his sons have suffered from the advent of Pole and Magyar. Some may have migrated, but certainly those left have easier work and better pay. It is as though the alien tide had passed beneath them and lifted them up. On the other hand, in Pittsburgh and vicinity the new immigration has been like a flood sweeping away the jobs, homes, and standards of great num- bers, and obliging them to save themselves by ac- cepting poorer occupations or fleeing to the West. The cause of the difference is that Pittsburgh held to the basic industries, while in Cleveland numer- ous high-grade manufactures started up which ab- CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 221 sorbed the displaced workmen into the upper part of their labor force. OUR STANDAED OF LIVING CRUMBLES .Unless there is some such collateral growth of skill-demanding industries, the new immigrants bring disaster to many of the working-men they undercut. The expansion of the industry will create some good jobs, but not enough to reabsorb the Americans displaced. Thus in the iron-ore- mines of Minnesota, out of seventy-five men kept busy by one steam-shovel, only thirteen get $2.50 a day or more, and $2.50 is the least that will main- tain a family on the American standard. It is plain that the advent of sixty-two cheap immi- grants might displace sixty-two Americans or Irish, while the setting up of an additional steam shovel would create only thirteen decent-wage jobs for them. Scarcely any industry can grow fast enough to reabsorb into skilled or semi- skilled positions the displaced workmen. Employers observe a tendency for employment to become more fluctuating and seasonal because of access to an elastic supply of aliens, without family or local attachments, ready to go anywhere or do anything. In certain centers, immigrant laborers form, as it were, visible living pools from which the employer can dip as he needs. Why should he smooth out his work evenly through the year in order to keep a labor force composed of family men with local roots when he can always take on * ' ginnies ' ' without trouble and drop them 222 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW without compunction? Railroad shops are com- ing to hire and to ''fire" men as they need them instead of relying on the experienced regular em- ployees. In a concern with 30,000 employees, the rate of change is a hundred per cent, a year, and is increasing! Labor leaders notice that employ- ment is becoming more fluctuating, there are fewer steady jobs, and the proportion of men who are justified in founding a home constantly di- minishes. IMMIGRATION AND CRISES The fact that during an acute industrial de- pression in this country the immigrant stream not only runs low, but the departures may exceed the arrivals (as in the eight months following the 1907 panic, when there was a decrease of 124,124 in our alien population), has been made the foundation for the argument that surplus im- migrant labor, by promptly taking itself off when times are bad here, relieves the labor market and hastens the return to normal conditions. It is overlooked that only the prosperous go, leaving upon us the burden of the weak unemployed aliens. Moreover, at the first sign of returning prosperity, a freshet of immigrants starts up, thereby checking sharply the good-times tendency toward higher wages and better working condi- tions. THE RISE OF SOCIAL PRESSURE Free land, coupled with high individual eflB- ciency, has made this country a low-pressure area. CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 225 It ought to remain such, because individualistic democracy forbids a blind animal-like increase of numbers. By causing the population to accom- modate itself to opportunities, our democracy solves the Sphinx's riddle and opens a bright prospect of continuous social progress. But of late that prospect has been clouded. The stream- ing in from the backward lands is sensibly convert- ing this country from a low-pressure area into a high-pressure area. It is nearly a generation since the stress, registered in the labor-market, caused the British working-man to fight shy of America. It is twenty years since it reached the point at which the German working-man, already on the up-grade at home, ceased to be drawn to America. As the saturation of our labor-market by cheaper and ever cheaper human beings raises the pres- sure-gage, we fail to attract as of yore such peo- ples as the North Italians and the Magyars. In 1898 few came to us from east of Hungary. Now we are receiving them from Asiatic Turkey, Circassia, Syria, and Arabia. An immigration has started up from Persia, and conditions are ripe for a heavy influx from western Asia. These remote regions, which have had only twilight from Europe's forenoon, are high-pressure areas. Their peoples are too many in relation to the op- portunities they know how to use. Until educa- tion, democratic ideas, and the elevation of women restrict their increase, or machine industry widens their opportunities, these regions will continue to produce a surplus of people, which the enterpris- 226 THE OLD WORLD IX THE NEW ing avarice of steamsliip companies will make ever more mobile and more threatening to the wage- earners of an advanced country. Only lately comes the announcement that one of the trans-At- lantic lines is about to run its steamships through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus into Black Sea ports in order to bring immigrants direct to America from southeastern Europe without the expense of the long haul overland to Hamburg. If an air-chamber be successively connected by pipes with a large number of tanks of compressed air, the pressure within the chamber must rise. Similarly, if a low-pressure society be connected by cheap steam-transportation with several high- pressure societies, and allows them freely to dis- charge into it their surplus population, the pres- sure in that society must rise. But for Chinese exclusion we should by this time have six or eight million Celestials in the far "West, and mud vil- lages and bamboo huts would fill the noble valleys of California. Something like this must occur as we go on draining away surplus people from larger and larger areas of high-pressure. Immigration raises the pressure-gage at once for laborers, but only gradually for other classes. It is the children of the immigrants who commu- nicate the pressure to all social levels. The in- vestor, landowner, or contractor profits by the coming in of bare-handed men, and can well afford to preach world-wide brotherhood. The profes- sional man, sitting secure above the arena of struggle, can nobly rebuke narrowness and race CONSEQUENCES ECONOMIC 227 hatred. Throughout our comfortable classes one finds high-sounding humanitarianism and facile lip-sympathy for immigrants coexisting with heartless indifference to what depressive immigra- tion is doing and will do to American wage-earn- ers and their children. If the stream of immigra- tion included capitalists with funds, merchants ready to invade all lines of business, lawyers, doc- tors, engineers, and professors qualified to com- pete immediately with our professional men, even judges and officials able to lure votes away from our own candidates for office, the pressure would be felt all along the line, and there might be some- thing heroic in these groups standing for the equal right of all races to American opportunities. But since actually the brunt is borne by labor, it is easy for the shielded to indulge in generous views on the subject of immigration. CHAPTER X SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION THERE is a certain anthracite town of 26,- 000 inJiabitants in which are writ large the moral and social consequences of injecting 10,000 sixteenth-century people into a twentieth-century community. By their presence the foreigners necessarily lower the general plane of intelhgence, self-restraint, refinement, orderliness, and efl&- eiency. With them, of course, comes an increase of drink and of the crimes from drink. The great excess of men among them leads to sexual im- morality and the diffusion of private diseases. A primitive midwifery is practised, and the igno- rance of the poor mothers fills the cemetery with tiny graves. The women go about their homes barefoot, and their rooms and clothing reek with the odors of cooking and uneleanliness. The standards of modesty are EUzabethan. The miners bathe in the kitchen before the females and children of the household, and women soon to be- come mothers appear in pubHc unconcerned. The foreigners attend church regularly, but their noisy amusements banish the quiet Sunday. The for- eign men, three-eighths of whom are illiterate, pride themselves on their physical strength rather 228 SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 229 than on their skill, and are willing to take jobs requiring nothing but brawn. Barriers of speech, education, and religious faith split the people into unsympathetic, even hostile camps. The worst element in the commu- nity makes use of the ignorance and venality of the foreign-bom voters to exclude the better citi- zens from any share in the control of local affairs. In this babel no newspaper becomes strong enough to mold and lead public opinion. On account of the smallness of the English-reading public, — the native born men number slightly over two thousand and those of American parentage less than a thousand — the single English daily has so few subscribers that it cannot afford to offend any of them by exposing municipal rottenness. The chance to prey on the ignorant foreigner tempts the cupidity and corrupts the ethics of local business and professional men. The Slavic thirst, multiplying saloons up to one for every twenty-six families, is communicated to Ameri- cans, and results in an increase of liquor crimes among all classes. In like manner familiarity with the immodesties of the foreigners coarsens the native-bom. With the basest Americans and the lowest for- eigners united by thirst and greed, while the de- cent Americans and the decent foreigners under- stand one another too little for team-work, it is not surprising that the municipal government is poor and that the taxpayers are robbed. Only a few of the main streets are paved; the rest are 230 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW muddy and poorly guttered. Outside the central portion of the city one meets with open sewage, garbage, dung-heaps, and foul odors. Sidewalks are lacking or in bad repair. The police force, composed of four Lithuanians, two Poles, one Ger- man, and one Irishman, is so inefficient that ' ' pis- tol-toting" after nightfall is common among all classes. At times hold-ups have been so frequent that it was not considered safe for a well-dressed person to show himself in the foreign sections after dark. In the words of a prominent local criminal la\vyer : We have a police force that can't speak English. Within the last few years there have been six un- avenged murders in this town. Why, if there were anybody I wanted to get rid of, I'd entice him here, shoot him down in the street, and then go around and say good-by to the police. Here in a nutshell are presented the social ef- fects that naturally follow the introduction into an advanced people of great numbers of backward immigrants. One need not question the funda- mental worth of the immigrants or their possi- bilities in order to argue that they must act as a drag on the social progress of the nation that in- corporates them. ILLITERACY Among us there are now two million foreign- bom illiterates, while the number of foreign-born SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 231 men of voting age unable to read and write has passed the million mark. The confessed illiteracy of the multitudes coming from southern and eastern Europe is 35.8 per cent, as against 2.7 per cent, for the dwindling streams from the North and West. We know that the actual state is somewhat worse than these figures indicate, because many unlettered aliens fearing rejection falsely declare themselves able to read and write. If the lands of ignorance continue to discharge unhindered their surplus into our country, we must resign ourselves to having numbers of fellow- citizens who, in the words of the Commissioner of Immigration at New York, ''do not know the days of the week, the months of the year, their own ages, or the name of any country in Europe outside their own." Or, as another official puts it: In our daily official duties we come to know as be- longing to a normal human adult type the individual who cannot count to twenty every time correctly; who can tell the simi of two and two, but not of nine and six ; name the days of the week, but not the months of the year; who knows that he has arrived at New York or Boston, as the case may be, but does not know the route he followed from his home or how long it took to reach here; who says he is destined to America, but has to rely on showing a written address for further particu- lars; who swears he paid his own passage, but is un- able to tell what it cost, and at the same time shows an order for railroad transportation to destination prepaid in this country. 232 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW While sister countries are fast nearing the goal of complete adult literacy, deteriorating immigra- tion makes it very hard to lift the plane of popu- lar intelligence in the United States. The foreign- born between twenty and thirty-four years of age, late-comers of course, show five times the illiteracy of native whites of the same age. But those above forty-five years of age, mostly earlier immi- grants, have scarcely twice the illiteracy of native whites above forty-five. This shows how much wider is the gulf between the Americans of to-day and the new immigrants than that between the Americans of a generation ago and the old immi- grants. Thanks to extraordinary educational efforts, the illiteracy of native white voters dropped a third during the last decade ; that is, from 4.9 per cent, to 3.5 per cent. But the illiteracy of the foreign- bom men rose to 12 per cent. ; so that the propor- tion of white men in this country unable to read and write any language declined only 9 per cent, when, but for the influx of illiterates, it would have fallen 30 per cent. In the despatches of August 16, 1912, is an ac- count of a gathering of ten thousand afflicted peo- ple at" a shrine at Carey, Ohio, reputed to possess a miraculous healing virtue. Special trains brought together multitudes of credulous, and at least one "miracle" was reported. As this coun- try fills up with the densely ignorant, there will be more of this sort of thing. The characteristic features of the Middle Ages may be expected to SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 233 appear among us to the degree tliat our popula- tion comes to be composed of persons at tlie medieval level of culture. YELLOW JOUBNALISM In accounting for yellow journalism, no one seems to have noticed that the saffron newspapers are aimed at a sub- American mind groping its way out of a fog. The scare-heads, red and green ink, pictures, words of one syllable, gong effects, and appeal to the primitive emotions, are apt to jar upon the home-bred farmer or mechanic. "After all," he reflects, *'I am not a child." Since its success in the great cities, this style of newspaper has been tried everywhere; but it appears there are soils in which the "yellows" will not thrive. When a population is sixty per cent. American stock, the editor who takes for granted some intel- ligence in his readers outlasts the howling der- vish. But when the native stock falls below thirty per cent, and the foreign element exceeds it, yel- lowness tends to become endemic. False sim- plicity, distortion, and crude emotionalism are the resources of newspapers striving to reach and interest undeveloped minds. But the arts that win the immigrant deprave the taste of native readers and lower the intelligence of the commu- nity. PEONAGE The friendless, exploitable alien by his presence tends to corrupt our laws and practices respecting labor. In 1908 the House of Eepresentatives di- 234 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW rected the Immigration Commission to report on the treatment and conditions of work of immi- grants in certain Southern States ''and other States." The last phrase was introduced merely to avoid the appearance of sectionalism, for no congressman dreamed that peonage existed any- where save in the South. The investigation dis- closed, however, the startling fact that immigrant peonage exists in every State but Oklahoma and Connecticut. In the West the commission found ''many cases of involuntary servitude," but no prosecutions. It was in the lumber-camps of Maine that the commission found "the most com- plete system of peonage in the country. ' ' CASTE SPIRIT The desire to cure certain ills has been slow to develop among us because the victims are aliens who, we imagine, don't mind it very much. On learning that the low pay of the Itahan navy for- bids meat, we recall that all Italians prefer maca- roni, anyhow. With downtrodden immigrants we do not sympathize as we would with down- trodden Americans. The foreign-born laborers are "wops" and don't count; the others are "white men." After a great mine disaster a Pittsburgh newspaper posted the bulletin: "Four hundred miners killed. Fifteen Amer- icans." Of late a great split has opened between the American and Americanized working-men and the foreigners, with their new sense of being ex- ploited and despised. The break shows itself sen- SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 235 sationally in the bitter fight between the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. The former denounces the red- flag methods of the latter, ignores I. W. W. strikes, and allows its members to become strike-breakers. When the latter precipitates a strike in some in- dustry in which the Federationists are numerous, we shall see an unprecedented warfare between native and foreign groups of working-men. It is significant of the coming cleavage that the mother of the I. W. W., the Western Federation of Miners, at once the most American and the most radical of the great labor-unions, has disowned the daughter organization since its leaders sought to rally inflammable and irresponsible immigrants with the fierce cry, * ' Sabotage. No Truce. ' ' THE POSITION OF WOMEN Perhaps the most sensitive index of moral ad- vancement is the position assigned to woman. Never is there a genuine advance that does not leave her more planet and less satellite. Until recently nowhere else in the world did women en- joy the freedom and encouragement they received in America. It is folly, however, to suppose that their lot will not be affected by the presence of six millions from belated Europe and from Asia, where consideration for the weaker sex is cer- tainly not greater than that of the English before the Puritan Reformation. With most of our Slavic nationahties, it is said, the boy may strike his sister with impunity, but 236 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW the girl who strikes her brother is likely to be chas- tised. Few of the later immigrants think of giv- ing the daughter as good a chance as the son. Among the American students in our colleges there are three young men to one young woman. For the native students of foreign fathers the ratio is four to one, and for the foreign-bom eight to one. The Italians keep their daughters close, and marry them off very early. In the 1909 strike of the New York shirt-waist makers, all the nationalities responded to the union ideal save the Italian girls. More than that, hundreds of them slipped into the strikers' jobs. Mystified by the strange, stolid resistance of the brown-eyed girls to all entreaties, the strike- leaders visited their homes. There they found that the Italian woman, instead of being a free moral agent, is absolutely subject to the will of her nearest male relative, and the man would not take the wife, sister, or daughter out of the shop miless he was well paid for it. East European peasants are brutal in the as- sertion of marital rights, so when the poor im- migrant woman, noticing the lot of the American wife, comes to the point of rebelling against the overlarge family, she runs the risk of rough treat- ment. Some nationalities are almost Oriental in the way they seclude their women. It is signifi- cant that the Euthenian, Polish, Portuguese, South Italian, and Greek female employees who have lived here from five to ten years are further SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 237 behind their men-folk in speaking English than the women from northern and western Eu- rope. That the woman's movement in America is to meet with hard sledding cannot be doubted. The yielding conservatism of our East has been but- tressed of late by the incorporation of millions of immigrants bred in the coarse peasant philosophy of sex. It may be long before women win in the East the recognition they have won in the more American parts of the country. Re- cently the school board of New York, on motion of Commissioner Abraham Stern, refused even to allow discussion of a woman teacher's petition for a year's leave of absence without pay in order to have a baby. This moved "The Independent," which has been a Mark Tapley on the immigra- tion question, to remark: "The wave of recent • immigration has brought with it the Oriental con- ception of woman's status. A man whose reli- gion requires him every morning to thank God that he was not born a woman is likely to treat women so that they will wish they had been born men. We must not shut our eyes to the fact that in the future the Christian conception of woman- hood is not to be maintained in this country with- out a struggle." THE SOCIAL EVIL From a half to three-fifths of the immigration of the period 1868-88 was male, but the new immigra- tion shows a male preponderance of about three 238 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW to one. Among those from Austria there are 155 males to 100 females. Among those from Hun- gary the proportion is 161 to 100 ; from Italy, 191 ; from Asiatic Turkey, 210 ; from European Turkey, 769 ; from the Balkan States, 1107 ; from Greece, 1192. A quarter of the Polish husbands in in- dustry, a third of the married Slovak and Italian men, nearly half of the Magyars and Russians, three-fifths of the Croatians, three-fourths of the Greeks and Rumanians, and nine-tenths of the Bulgarians, have left their wives in the old coun- try! Two million more immigrant men than immi- grant women 1 Can any one ask what this leads to? In colonial times the consequences of split- family immigration were so bad that Massachu- setts and Connecticut passed laws requiring spouses to return to their mates in England unless they were "come over to make way for their fam- ilies." We are broader-minded, and will inter- fere with nothing that does not wound prosper- ity. The testimony of foreign consuls and leaders among the foreign-born leaves no doubt that in some instances the woman cook of the immigrant boarding-house is common to the in- mates. HOUSING In the South Side of Pittsburgh there are streets lined with the decent homes of German steel- workers. A glance down the paved passage lead- ing to the rear of the house reveals absolute clean- SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGKATION 239 liness, and four times out of five one glimpses a tree, a flower garden, an arbor, or a mass of vines. In Wood's Eun, a few miles away, one finds the Slavic laborers of the Pressed Steel Car Company huddled in dilapidated rented dwellings so noi- some and repulsive that one must visit the lower quarters of Canton to meet their like. One cause of the difference is that the Slavs are largely tran- sients, who do nothing to house themselves be- cause they are saving in order to return to their native village. The fact that a growing proportion of our im- migrants, having left families behind them, form no strong local attachments and have no desire to build homes here is one reason why of late the housing problem has become acute in American industrial centers. OVERGROWTH OF CITIES Not least among the multiplying symptoms of social ill health in this country is the undue growth of cities. A million city-dwellers create ten times the amount of "problem^' presented by a million on the farms. Now, as one traverses the gamut that leads from farms to towns, from towns to cities, and from little cities to big, the proportion of American stock steadily diminishes while the foreign stock increases its representation until in the great cities it constitutes nearly three- fourths of the population. In 1910 the percent- age distribution of our white population was as follows : — 240 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW NATIVE WHITE FOREIGN FOREIGN- STOCK STOCK BORN . 64.1 20.8 7.5 Cities 2,500—10,000 57.5 34.5 13.9 Cities 10,000—25,000 50.4 42. 14.4 Cities 25,000—100,000 . . . . 45.9 46.7 20.2 Cities 100,000—500,000 . . . 38.9 53.4 22.1 Cities 500,000 and over . . . 25.6 70.8 33.6 It is not that the immigrants love streets and crowds. Two-thirds of them are farm bred, but they are dropped down in cities, and they find it easier to herd there with their fellows than to make their way into the open country. Our cities would be fewer and smaller had they fed on noth- ing but country-bred Americans. The later alien influx has rushed us into the thick of urban prob- lems, and these are gravest where Americans are fewest. Congestion, misliving, segregation, cor- ruption, and confusion are seen in motley groups like Pittsburgh, Jersey City, Paterson, and Fall River rather than in native centers like Indianapolis, Columbus, Nashville, and Los Angeles. PAUPEEISM Ten years ago two-fifths of the paupers in our almshouses were foreign-bom, but most of them had come over in the old careless days when we allowed European poorhouses to send us their in- mates. Now that our authorities turn back such as appear likely to become a public charge, the SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 243 obvious pauper is not entering this country. We know that virtually every Greek in America is self- supporting. The Syrians are said to be sin- gularly independent. The Slavs and the Magyars are sturdy in spirit, and the numerous indigent Hebrews are for the most part cared for by their own race. Nevertheless, dispensers of charity agree that many South Italians are landing with the most extravagant ideas of what is coming to them. They apply at once for relief with the air, *'Here we are. Now what are you going to do for us?" They even insist on relief as a right. At home it had been noised about that in foolish America baskets of food are actually sent in to the needy, and some are coming over expressly to obtain such largess. Probably none are so infected with spiritual hookworm as the immigrants from Na- ples. It will be recalled that when Garibaldi and his thousand were fighting to break the Bourbon tyranny in the South, the Neapolitans would hur- rah for them, but would not even care for the wounded. Says the Forty-seventh Annual Report of the New York Juvenile Asylum: It is remarkable that recently arrived immigrants who display small adaptability in American standards are by no means slow in learning about this and other institutions where they may safely leave their children to be fed, clothed, and cared for at the public expense. This is one of the inducements which led them to leave their native land. 244 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Charity experts are very pessimistic as to what we shall see when those who come in their youth have passed their prime and met the cumulative effects of overwork, city life, drink, and vice. Still darker are their forebodings for a second generation, reared too often by ignorant, avari- cious rustics lodging in damp cellars, sleeping with their windows shut, and living on the bad, cheap food of cities. Of the Italians in Boston Dr. Bushee writes: They show the beginnings of a degenerate class, such as has been fully developed among the Irish. ... If allowed to continue in unwholesome conditions, we may be sure that the next generation will bring forth a large crop of dependents, delinquents and defectives to fill up our public institutions. Says a charity superintendent working in a huge Polish quarter: It is the second generation that will give us trouble. The parents come with rugged peasant health, and many of them keep their strength even in the slum. But their children often start life weakened physically and men- tall}^ by the conditions under which they were reared. They have been raised in close, unsanitary quarters, in overlarge families, by parents who drunk up or saved too much, spent too little on the children, or worked them too soon. Their sole salvation is the open country, and they can't be pushed into the country. All of us are aghast at the weak fiber of the second generation. Every year I see the morass of helpless poverty getting bigger. The evil harvest of past mistakes is ripening, but it will take twenty years before we see the worst SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 245 of it. If immigration were cut off short to-day, the bur- den from past neglect and exploitation would go on increasing for years. THE WAYWAED CHILD OF THE IMMIGEANT In 1908 nine-tenths of the 2600 complaints of children going wrong made to the Juvenile Pro- tective Association of Chicago related to the chil- dren of immigrants. It is said that four-fifths of the youths brought before the Juvenile Court of Chicago come from the homes of the foreign- born. In Pittsburgh the proportion is at least two-thirds. However startling these signs of moral breakdown in the families of the new immi- grants, there is nothing mysterious about it. The lower the state from which the alien comes, the more of a grotesque he will appear in the shrewd eyes of his partly Americanized children. ' ' Obe- dience to parents seems to be dying out among the Jews," says a Boston charity visitor. "The children feel it is n't necessary to obey a mother who wears a shawl or a father who wears a full beard." ''Sometimes it is the young daughter who rules the Jewish family," observes a Pitts- burgh settlement head, "because she alone knows what is 'American.' But see how this results in a great number of Jewish girls going astray. Since the mother continues to shave her head and wear a wig as she did in Poland, the daughter as- sumes that mother is equally old-fogyish when she insists that a nice girl doesn't paint her face or run with boys in the evening." 246 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Through their knowledge of our speech and ways, the children have a great advantage in their efforts to slip the parental leash. The bad boy tells his father that whipping "doesn't go" in this country. Reversing the natural order, the child becomes the fount of knowledge, and the parents hang on the lips of their precocious off- spring. If the policeman inquires about some escapade or the truant officer gives warning, it is the scamp himself who must interpret between parent and officer. The immigrant is braced by certain Old- World loyalties, but his child may grow up loyal to nothing whatever, a rank egoist and an incorrigible who will give us vast trouble before we are done with him. Still, the child is not always to blame. Often the homes are so crowded and dirty," says a pro- bation officer, *'that no boy can go right. The Slavs save so greedily that their children become disgusted with the wretched home conditions and sleep out." One hears of foreign-born with sev- eral boarders sending their children out to beg or to steal coal. In one city investigation showed that only a third of the Italian children taken from school on their fourteenth birthday were needed as bread-winners. Their parents thought only of the sixty cents a week. In another only one-fourteenth of the Italian school children are above the primary grades, and one-eleventh of the Slavic, as against two-fiifths of the American school children in grammar grades or high school. Miss Addams tells of a young man from the south Dependent Slovak Family, Cleveland SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 249 of Italy who was mouniing the death of his little girl of twelve. In his grief he said quite simply : **She was my oldest kid. In two years she would have supported me, and now I shall have to work five or six years longer until the next one can do it." He expected to retire permanently at the age of thirty-four. INSANITY AMONG THE FOREIGN-BORN Not only do the foreign-bom appear to be more subject to insanity than the native-born, but when insane they are more likely to become a pubUc charge. Of the asylum population they appear to constitute about a third. In New York during the year ending September 30, 1911, 4218 patients who were immigrants or of immigrant parents were admitted to the insane hospitals of the State. This is three-quarters of the melancholy intake for that year. Only one out of nine of the first admissions from New York City was of native stock. The New York State Hospital Commis- sion declares that "the frequency of insanity in our foreign population is 2.19 times greater than in those of native birth." In New York City it "is 2.48 times that of the native-bom." Excessive insanity is probably a part of the price the foreign-born pay for the opportunities of a strange and stimulating environment, with greater strains than some of them are able to bear. America calls forth powerful reactions in these people. Here they feel themselves in the grasp of giant forces they can neither withstand 250 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW nor comprehend. The i^assions and the exer- tions, the hopes and the fears, the exultations and the despairs, America excites in the immigrant are likely to be intenser than anything he would have experienced in his natal village. In view of the fact that every year New York cares for 15,000 foreign-bom insane at a cost of $3,500,000 and that the State's sad harvest of de- mented immigrants during the single year 1911 will cost about $8,000,000 before they die or are discharged, there is some offset to be made to the profits drawn from the immigrants by the trans- porting companies, landlords, real-estate men, employers, contractors, brewers, and liquor-deal- ers of the State. Besides, there is the cost of the paupers and the law-breakers of foreign origin. All such burdens, however, since they fall upon the public at large, do not detract from or qualify that private or business-man's prosperity which it is the office of the true modern statesman to promote. IMMIGRATION AND THE SEPABATE SCHOOL In a polyglot mining town of Minnesota is a superintendent who has made the public school a bigger factor in Americanization than I have found it anywhere else. The law gives him the children until they are sixteen, and he holds them all. His school buildings are civic and so- cial centers. Through the winter, in his high school auditorium, which seats 1200 persons, he gives a course of entertainment which is self-sup- SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGEATION 251 porting, although his "talent" for a single even- ing cost as much as $200. By means of the 400 foreigners in his night schools he has a grip on the voters which his foes have learned to dread. Under his lead the community has broken the mine-boss collar and won real self-govern- ment. The people trust him and bring him their troubles. He has jurisdiction over everything that can atfect the children of the town, and his conception is wide. Wielding both legal and moral authority, he is, as it were, a corporation president and a medieval bishop rolled into one. This man sets no limit to the transforming power of the public school. He insists that the right sort of schooling will not only alter the ex- pression, but will even change the shape of the skull and the bony formation of the face. In his office is a beautiful tabouret made by a "wild boy" within a year after he had been brought in kicking and screaming. He scotfs at the fear of a lack of patriotism in the foreign-born or their children. He knows just how to create the senti- ment. He has flag drills and special programs, and in the Fourth of July parade and the Decora- tion day procession the schools have always a fine float. He declares he can build human beings to order, and will not woriy about immigration so long as the public school is given a chance at the second generation. But is the public school to have this cha.nce? Multitudes of the new immigrants adhere to churches which do not believe in the public 252 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW schools. "Their pupils," observed a priest to me, **are like wild children." Said a bishop: **No branches can be safely taught divorced from religion. We believe that geography, history, and even language ought to be presented from our point of view." Hence with great rapidity the children of Roman Catholics are being drawn apart into parochial schools. In Cleveland one- third of the population is supposed to be Catholic, and the 27,500 pupils in the parochial schools are nearly one-third of all school children. In Chi- cago there are 112,000 in the parish schools to 300,000 in the public schools. In New York the proportion is about one-sixth. In twenty-eight leading American cities the attendance of the par- ish schools increased sixty per cent, between 1897 and 1910, as against an increase of from forty-five to fifty per cent, in the attendance of the public schools. The total number of children in the pa- rochial schools is about 1,400,000. Separate ed- ucation is a settled Catholic policy, and the bish- ops say they expect to enroll finally the children of all their people. To bring this about, the public schools are de- nounced from the pulpit as "Godless" and "im- moral," their product as mannerless and disobe- dient. "We think," says a Slovak leader, "that the parochial school pupils are more pious, more respectful toward parents and toward all persons in authority." The Polish, Lithuanian, or Slovak priest, less often the German or Bohe- mian, says bluntly: "If you send your children SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 253 to the public school, they Mall go to hell. ' ' Some- times the priest threatens to exclude from the confessional parents who send their children to the public school. An archbishop recently de- creed that parents who without permission send their children to the public school after they have made their first communion ''commit a grievous sin and cannot receive the sacraments of the church." Within the immigrant groups there is active opposition, but it appears to be futile. In the soft-coal mining communities of Pennsylvania 9 per cent, of the children of native white paren- tage attend the parochial schools, whereas 24 per cent, of the Polish children and 48 per cent, of the Slovak children are in these schools. In a certain district in Chicago where the public- school teachers had felt they could hold their own, the foreign mothers came at last to take away their children's school-books, weeping because they were forced to transfer their children to the parish school. Now, the parish school tends to segregate the children of the foreign-bom. Parishes are formed for groups of the same speech, so a parish school will embrace children of only one nation- ality — German, Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Croatian, Slovak, Magyar, Portuguese, or French Canadian, as the case may be. Often priest and teachers have been imported, and only the moth- er-tongue is used. "English," says a school superintendent, comes to be taught as a purely ornamental language, like French in the public 254 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW high school." Hence American-bom children are leaving school not only unable to read and write English, but scarcely able to speak it. The foreign-speech school, while it binds the young to their parents, to their people, and to the old coun- try, cuts them off from America. Says a Chicago Lithuanian leader : ' * There are 3000 of our chil- dren in the parochial schools here. The teachers are ignorant, illiterate spinsters from Lithuania who have studied here two or three years. When at fourteen the pupils quit school, they are no more advanced than the public-school pupils of ten. This is why 50,000 Lithuanians here have only twenty children in the high school. ' ' When, now, to the removal of the second gener- ation from the public school there is added, as is often the case, the endeavor to keep them away from the social center, the small park field-house, the public playground, the social settlement, the secular American press and welfare work in the factories, it is plain that those optimists who im- agine that assimilation of the immigrant is pro- ceeding unhindered are living in a fool's para- dise. SOCIAL. DECLINE "Our descendants," a social worker remarked to me, "will look back on the nineteenth century as our Golden Age, just as we look back on Greece." Thoughtful people whose work takes them into the slime at the bottom of our foreign- ized cities and industrial centers find decline SOCIAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION 255 actually upon us. A visiting nurse who has worked for seven years in the stock-yards district of Chicago reports that of late the drinking habit is taking hold of foreign women at an alarming rate. In the saloons there the dignified stein has given way to the beer pail. In the Range towns of Minnesota there are 356 saloons, of which eighty-one are run by native-born, the rest chiefly by recent immigrants. Into a Pennsylvania coal town of 1,800 people, mostly foreign-born, are shipped each week a car-load of beer and a barrel of whisky. Where the new foreign-born are numerous, women and children frequent the sa- loons as freely as the men. In the cities family desertion is growing at a great rate among for- eign-born husbands. Facts are justifying the forecast made ten years ago by H. G. Wells: **If things go on as they are going, the great mass of them will remain a very low lower class — will re- main largely illiterate, industrialized peasants." The continuance of depressive immigration will lead to nothing catastrophic. Riots and labor strife will oftener break out, but the country will certainly not weaken nor collapse. Of patriotism of the military type there will be no lack. Sci- entific and technical advance will go on the same. The spread of business organization and efficiency will continue. The only thing that will happen will be a mysterious slackening in social progress. The mass will give signs of sluggishness, and the social procession will be strung out. We are engaged in a generous rivalry with the 256 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW West Europeans and the Australians to see which can do the most to lift the plane of life of the masses, f Presently we shall be dismayed by the sense of falling behind, We shall be amazed to find the Swiss or the Danes or the New Zealand- ers making strides we cannot match. Stung with mortification at losing our erstwhile lead in the advancement of the common people, we shall cast i about for someone to blame. Ultimate causes, of course, will be overlooked ; only proximate cause^ will be noticed. There will be loud outcry th^t mothers, or teachers, or clergjrmen, or editors, 6r social workers are not doing their duty. Our pub- lic schools, solely responsible as they obviously are for the intellectual and moral characteristics of the people, will be roundly denounced; and ii will be argued that church schools must take their place. There will be trying of this and trying of that, together with much ingenious legislation. As peasantism spreads and inertia proves uncon- querable, the opinion will grow that the old Amer- ican faith in the capacity and desire of the com- mon people for improvement was a delusion, and that only the superior classes care for progress. Not until the twenty-first century will the philo- sophic historian be able to declare with scientific certitude that the cause of the mysterious decline that came ilpon the American people early in the twentieth century was the deterioration of popular intelligence by the admission of great numbers of backward immigrants. CHAPTER XI IMMIGKANTS IN POLITICS ON a single Chicago hoarding, before the spring election of 1912, the writer saw the political placards of candidates with the follow- ing names: Kelly, Cassidy, Slattery, Alschuler, Pfaelzer, Bartzen, Umbach, Andersen, Romano, Knitckoff, Deneen, Hogue, Burres, Short. The humor of calling "Anglo-Saxon" the kind of gov- ernment these gentlemen will give is obvious. At that time, of the eighteen principal personages in the city government of Chicago, fourteen had Irish names, and three had German names. Of the eleven principal officials in the city govern- ment of Boston, nine had Irish names, and of the forty-nine members of the Lower House from the city of Boston, forty were obviously of Hibernian extraction. In San Francisco, the mayor, all the heads of the municipal departments, and ten out of eighteen members on the board of supervisors, bore names reminiscent of the Green Isle. As far back as 1871, of 112 chiefs of police from twenty-two States who attended the national po- lice convention, seventy-seven bore Irish names, and eleven had German names. In 1881, of the chiefs of police in forty-eight cities, thirty-three were clearly Irish, and five were clearly German. 259 260 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW In 1908, on the occasion of a ''home-coming" celebration in Boston, a newspaper told how the returning sons of Boston were "greeted by Mayor Fitzgerald and the following members of Congress: O'Connell, Kelihar, Sullivan, and McNary — following in the footsteps of Webster, Sunmer, Adams, and Hoar. They were told of the great work as Mayor of the late beloved Pat- rick Collins. At the City Hall they found the sons of Irish exiles and immigrants administering the affairs of the metropolis of New England. Besides the Mayor, they were greeted by John J. Murphy, Chainnan of the board of assessors; Commissioner of Streets Doyle; Commissioner of Baths O'Brien. Mr. Coakley is the head of the Park Department, and Dr. Durgan directs the Health Department. The Chief of the Fire De- partment is John A. Mullen. Head of the Mu- nicipal Printing Plant is Mr, Whelan. Superin- tendent of the Street Cleaning is Cummings; Superintendent of Sewers Leahy ; Superintendent of Buildings is Nolan; City Treasurer, Slattery; Police Commissioner, O'Meara." The Irish domination of our Northern cities is the broadest mark immigration has left on Amer- ican politics; the immigrants from Ireland, for the most part excessively poor, never got their feet upon the land as did the Germans and the Scandinavians, but remained huddled in cities. United by strong race feelings, they held together as voters, and, although never a clear majority, were able in time to capture control of most of IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 261 the greater municipalities. Now, for all their fine Celtic traits, these Irish immigrants had neither the temperament nor the training to make a success of popular government. They were totally without experience of the kind Americans had acquired in the working of democratic insti- tutions. The ordinary American by this time had become tinctured with the spirit of legalism. Many voters were able to look beyond the persons involved in a political contest and recognize the principles at stake. Such popular maxims as: "No man should be a judge in his own case," "The ballot a responsibility," "Patriotism above party," "Measures, not men," "A public office is a public trust," fostered self-restraint and helped the voters to take an impersonal, long-range view of political contests. Warm-hearted, sociable, clannish, and un- trained, the naturalized Irish failed to respect the first principles of civics. "What is the Constitu- tion between friends?" expresses their point of view. In their eyes, an election is not the deci- sion of a gTeat, impartial jury, but a struggle be- tween the "ins" and the "outs." Those who vote the same way are "friends." To scratch or to bolt is to "go back on your friends." Places and contracts are "spoils." The official's first duty is to find berths for his supporters. Not fitness, but party work, is one's title to a place on the municipal pay-roll. The city employee is to serve his party rather than the public that pays his salary. Even the justice of courts is to be- 262 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW come a matter of "pull" and "stand in," rather than of inflexible rules. A genial young Harvard man who has made the Good Government movement a power in a cer- tain New England city said to me: "The Ger- mans want to know which candidate is better qualified for the office. Among the Irish I have never heard such a consideration mentioned. They ask, 'Who wants this candidate?' 'Who is behind him ? ' I have lined up a good many Irish in support of Good Government men, but never by setting forth the merits of a matter or a can- didate. I approach my Irish friends with the personal appeal, 'Do this for me!' Nearly all the Irish who support our cause do it on a per- sonal loyalty basis. The best of the Irish in this city have often done as much harm to the cause of Good Government as the worst. Mayor C, a high-minded Irishman desiring to do the best he could for the city, gave us as bad a government as Mayor F., who thought of nothing but feather- ing his own nest. Mayor C. 'stood by his friends.' " The Hibernian domination has given our cities genial officials, brave policemen, and gaUant fire- fighters. It has also given them the name of be- ing the worst-governed cities in the civilized world. The mismanagement and corruption of the great cities of America have become a plane- tary scandal, and have dealt the principle of man- hood suffrage the worst blow it has received in the last half-century. Since the close of the Civil IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 263 War, hundreds of thousands of city-dwellers have languished miserably or perished prematurely from the bad water, bad housing, poor sanitation, and rampant vice in American municipalities run on the principles of the Celtic clan. On the other hand, it is likely that our British, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Jewish naturalized citizens — still more our English-Canadian voters — have benefited American politics. In politics men are swayed by passion, prejudice, or reason. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average American had come to be on his guard against passion in politics, but not yet had he reached the plane of reason. This left him the prey of prejudice. Men inherited their politics, and bragged of having always "voted straight." They voted Democratic for Jefferson's sake, or Republican from love of Lincoln. The citizens followed ruts, while the selfish interests "fol- lowed the ball." Now, the intelligent natural- ized foreigner, having inherited none of our prej- udices, would not respond to ancient cries or war-time issues. He inquired pointedly what each party proposed to do now. The abandon- ment of "waving the bloody shirt" and the sud- den appearance of the politics of actuality in the North, in the eighties, came about through the naturalization of Karl and Ole. The South has few foreign-bom voters, and the South is pre- cisely that part of the country in which the reign of prejudice in politics has longest delayed the advent of efficient and progressive government. 264 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW In 1910 there were certainly three million naturahzed citizens in the United States. In southern New England and New York they con- stitute a quarter of all the white voters. The same is true of Illinois and the Old Northwest. In Providence, Buffalo, Newark, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, there are two foreign voters to three native white voters. In Milwaukee, Detroit. Cleveland, and Boston, the ratio is about one to two. In Paterson, Chicago, and New York, the ratio is nearer three to five, and in Fall River it is three to four. When the foreigners are intel- hgent and experienced in the use of the ballot, their civic worth does not suffer by comparison with that of the natives. Indianapolis and Kan- sas City, in which the natives outnumber the natu- ralized ten to one, do not overshadow in civic ex- cellence the Twin Cities of Minnesota, with three natives to two naturalized. Cleveland, in which the naturalized citizens constitute a third, is po- litically superior to Cincinnati, in which they are less than a sixth. Chicago, with thrice the pro- portion of naturalized citizens Philadelphia has, was roused and strugghng with the python of cor- ruption while yet the city by the Delaware slept. THE NEW IMMIGEATION AND CITIZENSHIP Between 1895 and 1896 came the great shift in the sources of immigration. In the former year, 55 per cent, of the aliens came from northwestern Europe ; in the next year, southern and southeast- ern Europe gained the upper hand, and have kept IMMIGEAXTS IX POLITICS 265 it ever since. With the change in nationalities came a great change in the civic attitude of the immigTants. The Immigration Commission found that from 80 to 92 per cent, of the immi- grants from northwestern Europe, resident five years or more in this country, have acquired cit- izenship or have taken out first papers. Very different are the following figures, which show the interest in citizenship of the newer immi grant?; : PER CEXT. XATURAUZED Kussian Hebrews 57 Austrians 53 North Italians 46 Bulgarians 37 Poles 33 Lithuanians 32.5 South Italians 30 Eussians 28 Magyars 27 Slovaks 23 Rumanians 22 Syrians 21 Greeks 20 Portuguese 5.5 In 1890 and in 1900, 58 per cent, of the quali- fied foreign-bom men were voters; by 1910 the proportion had fallen to 45.6 per cent. The pres- ence of multitudes of floating laborers who have no intention of making this country their home, a marked indifference to citizenship on the part of some nationalities, and the stiffer require- 266 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW ments for naturalization imposed under the act of 1906, have caused the number of non-naturalized qualified foreigners in this country to swell from approximately 2,000,000 in 1900 to 3,500,000 in 1910. As things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of the unenfranchised. No doubt the country is better off for their not voting. Nevertheless, let it not be overlooked that this growth in the proportion of voteless wage-earners subtracts from the natural political strength of labor. The appeal of labor in an in- dustry like the cotton manufacture of the North, in which, besides the multitude of women and chil- dren, 70 per cent, of the foreign-born men remain aliens after five years of residence, is likely to re- ceive scant consideration by the ordinary legis- lature. Nor will such labor fare better at the hands of local authorities. The anti-strike ani- mus of the police in Lawrence, Little Falls, and Paterson was voiced by the official who gave to the press the statement: "We have kept the for- eign element in subjection before, and will con- tinue to do so as long as I am chief of Little Falls' police." Thus, without intending it, some of our commonwealths are accumulating voteless work- ers, like those conservative European states which restrict manhood suffrage in the industrial classes. THE NATUBALIZED IMMIGRANTS AOT) THEIR LEADERS "Come over here quick, Luigi," writes an Ital- ian to his friend in Palermo. "This is a wonder- IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 269 ful country. You can do anything you want to, and, besides, they give you a vote you can get two dollars for!" This Italian was an ignorant man, but not necessarily a bad man. It would not be just to look upon the later naturalized citizens as caring less for the suffrage than the older immi- grants. Some of them appreciate the ballot all the more from having been denied it in the old country. For the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July they show a naive enthu- siasm which we Americans felt a generation ago, before our muck had been raked. **The spirit of revolt against wrong," says a well-known worker among immigrants, '4s stronger in the foreign-bom than in the natives, because they come here expecting so much democracy, and they are shocked by the reality they find. It is they who insist upon the complete program of so- cial justice. ' ' Granting all this, there is no deny- ing, however, that many of the later immigrants have only a dim understanding of what the ballot means and how it may be used. Thirty years ago we knew as little of the ways of the ward boss as we knew of the mega- therium or the great auk. The sources of his power were as mysterious as were the sources of the Nile before Speke and Baker. Now, thanks to Miss Addams and other settlement-workers who have studied him in action from close at hand, we have him on a film. The ward boss was the discoverer of the fact that the ordinary immi- grant is a very poor, ignorant, and helpless man. 270 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW in the greatest need of assistance and protection. Nevertheless, this man has, or soon will have, one thing the politician greatly covets, namely, a vote. The petty politician soon learned that by be- friending and aiding the foreigners at the right time, he could build up an "influence" which he might use or sell to his own enrichment. So the ward politicians became pioneers in social work. For the sake of controlling votes, they did many things that the social settlement does for nothing. It is Alderman Tim who gets the Italian a per- mit for his push-cart or fruit-stand, who finds him a city-hall job, or a place with a public-service corporation, who protects him if he violates law or ordinance in running his business, who goes his bail if he is arrested, and * ' fixes things ' ' with the police judge or the state's attorney when he comes to trial. Even before Giuseppe is natural- ized, it is Tim who remembers him at Christmas with a big turkey, pays his rent at a pinch, or wins his undying gratitude by saving his baby from a pauper burial or sending carriages and flowers to the funeral. All this kindness and timely aid is prompted by selfish motives. Amply is Tim repaid by Giusep- pe's vote on election day. But at first Giuseppe misses the secret of the politician's interest in him, and votes Tim-wise as one shows a favor to a friend. Little does he dream of the dollar- harvest from the public-service companies and the vice interests Tim reaps with the ''power" he has built up out of the votes of the foreigners. IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 271 If, however, Giuseppe starts to be independent in the election booth, he is startled by the Jekyll- Hyde transformation of his erstwhile friend and patron. He is menaced with loss of job, with- drawal of permit or license. Suddenly the cur- rent is turned on in the city ordinances affecting him, and he is horrified to find himself in a mys- terious network of live wires. With the conniv- ance of a corrupt police force, Tim can even ruin him on a trumped-up charge. The law of Pennsylvania allows any voter who\ demands it to receive "assistance" in the mark-] ing of his ballot. So in Pittsburgh, Tim expects Giuseppe to demand ''assistance" and to take Tim with him into the booth to mark his ballot for him. Sometimes the election judges let Tim thrust himself into the booth despite the foreign- er's protests, and watch how he marks his ballot. In one precinct 92 per cent, of the voters received "assistance." Two Italians who refused it lost their jobs forthwith. The high-spirited North Italians resent such intrusion, and some of them threaten to cut to pieces the interloper. But al- ways the system is too strong for them. Thus the way of Tim is to allure or to intimi- date, or even combine the two. The immigrant erecting a little store is visited by a building in- spector and warned that his interior arrange- ments are all wrong. His friends urge the dis- tracted man to ' ' see Tim. ' ' He does so, and kind Tim "fixes it up," gaining thereby another loyal henchman. The victim never learns that the in- 272 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW spector was sent to teacli him the need of a pro- tector. So long as the immigrant is "right," he may put an encroaching bay-window on his house or store, keep open his saloon after midnight, or pack into his lodging-house more than the legal number of lodgers. Moved ostensibly by a deep concern for public health or safety or morals, the city council enacts a great variety of health, build- ing, and trades ordinances, in order that Tim may have plenty of clubs to hold over the foreigner's head. So between boss and immigrant grows up a relation like that between a feudal lord and his vassals. In return for the boss's help and pro- tection, the immigrant gives regularly his vote. The small fry get drinks or jobs, or help in time of trouble. The padrone, liquor-dealer, or lodg- ing-house keeper gets license or permit or immu- nity from prosecution, provided he delivers" the votes of enough of his fellow-countrymen. The ward boss realizes perfectly what his polit- ical power rests on, and is very conscientious in looking after his supporters. Of the Irish ''gray wolves" in the Chicago council I was told. ''Each of them is a natural ward leader, and wiU go through hell-fire for his people and they for him." To the boss with a hold on the immigrant the requirement that the poor fellow shall live five years in this country before voting presents itself as an empty legal formality. In 1905 a special examiner of the Federal Department of Justice reported: "Naturalization frauds have grown IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 273 and spread with the growth and spread of the alien population of the United States, until there is scarcely a city or county-seat town . . . where in some form these frauds have not from time to time been committed." In 1845 a Louisiana judge was impeached and removed for fraud, the principal evidence being that he had issued cer- tificates to 400 aliens in one day. The legislature might have been more lenient could it have fore- seen that in 1868 a single judge in New York would issue 2500 of such certificates in one day! The gigantic naturalization frauds committed in the Presidential compaign of 1868 resulted in an investigation by Congress and in the placing of congressional elections under Federal supervi- sion. During the month of October two New York judges issued 54,000 certificates. An in- vestigation in 1902 showed about 25,000 fraudu- lent certificates of naturalization in use in that city. There is hardly need nowadays to recount what Tim and his kind have done with the power they filched through the votes of Giuseppe and Jan and Michael. They have sold out the city to the fran- chise-seeking corporations. They have jobbed public works and pocketed a rake-off" on all municipal supplies. They have multiplied jobs and filled them with lazy henchmen. By making merchandise of building laws or health ordi- nances, they have caused an unknown number of people to be crushed, or burned, or poisoned. Worst of all, by selling immunity from police in- 274 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW terference to the vice interests, they have let the race be preyed on and consumed in the bud. Thanks to their * * protection, ' ' a shocking propor- tion of the inhabitants of our cities of mixed popu- lation are destroyed by drinking, dissipation, and venereal diseases. It is in the cities with many naturalized for- eigners or enfranchised negroes that the vice in- terests have had the freest hand in exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love for vice, but unwittingly they become the corner-stone of the system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the rawest for- eign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest partnership of the police with vice. Tam- many Hall first gained power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its Old Guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immi- grants. Exposed again and again, and thought to be shattered, Tammany has survived all shocks, because its supple/ of raw material has never been cut off. Not the loss of its friends has ever de- feated it; only the union of its foes. The only things it fears are those that bore from within — social settlements, social centers, the quick intel- ligence of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter natural- ization, and restriction of immigration. In every American city with a large pliant for- eign vote have appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and entrenches its power by intimidation at the polls, ballot IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 275 frauds, vote purchase, saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But its tap- root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of our cities. The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The Italian who opens an ice- cream parlor has to have a victualer's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liq- uor license if he fails to line up his fellow-coun- trymen for the local machine. The politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who at- tracts the foreign vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine ballots of an equal number of indignant intelligent American voters. The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of his own business, and of other businesses — gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution — which stimulate drinking. If ''blue" laws are on the statute-book, these in- terests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is 276 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-country- men. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bo- hemians are marshaled in the ''United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway the foreign- born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests. The foreign press is another means of mislead- ing the naturalized voters. These newspapers — Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish, etc., — while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in finan- cial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the high- est bidder, which is, of course, the party repre- senting the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another intrench- ing-tool. THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS If the immigrant is neither debauched nor mis- led, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us? When a people has reached such a degree of political like-mindedness, that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new ques- tions as they come up. But if it admits to citizen- ship myriads of strangers who have not yet Class of Foreign-Born Wdiui ii ( t arinthians) at the Cleveland Hard- ware Co., Cleveland, O.. Jleetiiig for Instruction in English in the Factory, Twice a Week from 5 to 6;30 IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 279 passed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citi- zens are made to thresh over again old straw — the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie un- touched. Pressing questions — public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protec- tion of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and pub- lic interests suffer. Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes, and delay that come with hetero- geneity, because they think the variety of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing, keeps us from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that rarely does an immigrant bring in his intel- lectual baggage anything of use to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and Haupt- mann, the fiction of Jokai and Sienkiewicz were not brought to us by way of Ellis Island. What we want is not ideas merely, but fruitful ideas, fructifying ideas. By debating the ideas of Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson, Metchnikoff, or Ellen Key, American thought is stimulated. But should we gain from the introduction of old Asi- atic points of view, which would reopen such ques- tions as witchcraft, child-marriage, and suttee? The elashings that arise from the presence among us of many voters with medieval minds are sheer waste of energy. While we Americans wrangle 280 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW over the old issues of clericalism, separate schools, and "personal liberty," the little homogeneous peoples — Norwegians and Danes and New Zeal- anders — are forging ahead of us in rational poli- tics and learning to look pityingly upon us as a chaos rather than a people. POLITICAL MYSTICISM VS. COMMON SENSE If you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political life in his country would re- main unaffected by the admission to the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and Bes- sarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political intelligence in reading and thinking Germany would not be lowered by the access to the ballot-box of multitudes of Serbs, Georgians, and Druses of Lebanon, and he will consign you to bedlam. Assure the son of Nor- way that the vote of the Persian or Yemenite, of sixty months' residence in Norway, will be as often wise and right as his own, and he will be in- sulted. It is only we Americans who assume that the voting of the Middle Atlantic States, with their million of naturalized citizens, or of the East North Central States, with their million, is as sane, discriminating, and forward-looking as it would be without them. The Italian historian and sociologist Ferrero, after reviewing our immigration policy, concludes that the Americans, far from being "practical," are really the mystics of the modern world. He IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS 281 says: "To confer citizenship each year upon great numbers of men born and educated in for- eign countries — ^men who come with ideas and sympathies totally out of spirit with the diverse conditions in the new country; to grant them political rights they do not want, and of which they have never thought; to compel them to de- clare allegiance to a political constitution which they often do not understand ; to try to transform subjects of old European monarchies into free citizens of young American republics over night — is not all this to do violence to common sense?" CHAPTER XII AMEKICAN BLOOD AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD AS I sought to show, near the end of my initial chapter, the conditions of settlement of this country caused those of uncommon energy and ven- turesomeness to outmultiply the rest of the popu- lation. Thus came into existence the pioneering breed; and this breed increased until it is safe to estimate that fully half of white Americans with native grandparents have one or more pioneers among their ancestors. Whatever valuable race traits distinguish the American people from the parent European stocks are due to the efflores- cence of this breed. Without it there would have been little in the performance of our people to arrest the attention of the world. Now we con- front the melancholy spectacle of this pioneer breed being swamped and submerged by an over- whelming tide of latecomers from the old-world hive. In Atlanta still seven out of eight white men had American parents; in Nash- ville and Richmond, four out of five; in Kan- sas City, two out of three; and in Los An- geles, one out of two; but in Detroit, Cleveland, and Paterson one man out of five had American parents; in Chicago and New York, one out of six; in Milwaukee, one out of seven; and in Fall 282 AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 285 River, one out of nine. Certainly never since the colonial era have the foreign-horn and their chil- dren formed so large a proportion of the Amer- ican people as at the present moment. I scanned 368 persons as they passed me in Union Square, New York, at a time when the garment-workers of the Fifth Avenue lofts were returning to their homes. Only thirty-eight of these passers-by had the type of face one would find at a county fair in the West or South. In the six or seven hundred thousand strangers that yearly join themselves to us for good and all, there are to be found, of course, every talent and every beauty. Out of the steerage come per- sons as fine and noble as any who have trodden American soil. Any adverse characterization of an immigrant stream implies, then, only that the trait is relatively frequent, not that it is universal. In this sense it is fair to say that the blood now being injected into the veins of our people is * ' sub-common. ' ' To one accustomed to the as- pect of the normal American population, the Cali- ban type shows up with a frequency that is start- ling. Observe immigrants not as they come travel-wan up the gang-plank, nor as they issue toil-begrimed from pit's mouth or mill gate, but in their gatherings, washed, combed, and in their Sunday best. You are struck by the fact that from ten to twenty per cent, are hirsute, low- browed, big-faced persons of obviously low men- tality. Not that they suggest evil. They simply look out of place in black clothes and stitf collar. 286 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW since clearly they belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age. These oxlike men are descendants of those who always stayed behind. Those in whom the soul burns vnth. the dull, smoky flame of the pine-knot stuck to the soil, and are now thick in the sluiceways of immi- gration. Those in whom it burns with a clear, luminous flame have been attracted to the cities of the home land and, having prospects, have no motive to submit themselves to the hardships of the steerage. To the practised eye, the physiognomy of cer- tain groups unmistakably proclaims inferiority of type. I have seen gatherings of the foreign- bom in which narrow and sloping foreheads were the rule. The shortness and smallness of the crania were very noticeable. There was much facial asymmetry. Among the women, beauty, aside from the fleeting, epidermal bloom of girl- hood, was quite lacking. In every face there was something wrong — lips thick, mouth coarse, up- per lip too long, cheek-bones too high, chin poorly formed, the bridge of the nose hollowed, the base of the nose tilted, or else the whole face progna- thous. There were so many sugar-loaf heads, moon-faces, slit mouths, lantern-jaws, and goose- bill noses that one might imagine a malicious jinn had amused himself by casting human beings in a set of skew-molds discarded by the Creator. Our captains of industry give a crowbar to the immigrant with a number nine face on a number six head, make a dividend out of him, and imagine AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 287 that is the end of the matter. They overlook that this man will beget children in his image — two or three times as many as the American — and that these children wiU in turn beget children. They chuckle at having opened an inexhaustible store of cheap tools and, lo! the American people is being altered for all time by these tools. Once before, captains of industry took a hand in making this people. Colonial planters imported Africans to hoe in the sun, to ''develop" the tobacco, in- digo, and rice plantations. Then, as now, business- minded men met with contempt the protests of a few idealists against their way of "building up the country." Those promoters of prosperity are dust, but they bequeathed a situation which in four years wiped out more wealth than two hundred years of slavery had built up, and which presents to- day the one unsolvable problem in this country. Without likening immigrants to negroes, one may point out how the latter-day employer resembles the old-time planter in his bUndness to the effects of his labor policy upon the blood of the nation. IMMIGRATION" AND GOOD LOOKS It is reasonable to expect an early falling off in the frequency of good looks in the American people. It is unthinkable that so many persons with crooked faces, coarse mouths, bad noses, heavy jaws, and low foreheads can mingle their heredity with ours without making personal beauty yet more rare among us than it actually is. 288 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW So much ugliness is at last bound to work to the surface. One ought to see the horror on the face of a fine-looking Italian or Hungarian consul when one asks him innocently, "Is the physiognomy of these immigrants typical of your people?" That the new immigrants are inferior in looks to the old immigrants may be seen by comparing, in a Labor Day parade, the faces of the cigar-makers and the garment-workers with those of the team- sters, piano-movers and steam-fitters. Even aside from the pouring in of the ill- favored, the crossing of the heterogeneous is bound to lessen good looks among us. It is note- worthy that the beauty which has often excited the admiration of European visitors has shown itself most in communities of comparative purity of blood. New England, Virginia, and Kentucky have been renowned for their beautiful women, but not the commonwealths with a mixed popula- tion. It is in the less-heterogeneous parts of the Middle West, such as Indiana and Kansas, that one is struck by the number of comely women. Twenty-four years ago the greatest living philosopher advised inquiring Japanese states- men to interdict marriages of Japanese with for- eigners, on the ground that the crossings of the too-unlike produce human beings with a "chaotic constitution." Herbert Spencer went on to say, "When the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight degree, the result is inevitably a bad one." The greatest students of hybridism to-day confirm Spencer 's surmise. The fusing of AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 289 American with German and Scandinavian immi- grants was only a reblending of kindred stocks, for Angles, Jutes, Danes, and Normans were wrought of yore into the fiber of the English breed. But the human varieties being collected in this country by the naked action of economic forces are too dissimilar to blend without produc- ing a good many faces of a chaotic constitution." Just as there is a wide difference in looks be- tween Bretons and Normans, Dutch and Hanover- ians, the Chinese of Hu-peh and the Chinese of Fukien, so broad contrasts in good looks may in time appear between the pure-blood parts of our country and those which have absorbed a motley assortment of immigrants. STATUEE AND PHYSIQUE Although the Slavs stand up well, our South Europeans run to low stature. A gang of Italian navvies filing along the street present, by their dwarfishness, a curious contrast to other people. The Portuguese, the Greeks, and the Syrians are, from our point of view, undersized. The Hebrew immigrants are very poor in physique. The average of Hebrew women in New York is just over five feet, and the young women in the gar- ment factories, although well developed, appear to be no taller than native girls of thirteen. On the physical side the Hebrews are the polar opposite of our pioneer breed. Not only are they undersized and weak-muscled, but they shun bod- ily activity and are exceedingly sensitive to pain. 290 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW Says a settlement worker: "You can't make boy scouts out of the Jews. There 's not a troop of them in all New York," Another remarks: ''They are absolute babies about pain. Their young fellows will scream with a hard lick." Students observe that husky young Hebrews on the foot-ball team lack grit, and will "take on" if they are bumped into hard. A young Ontario miner noticed that his Hebrew comrades groaned and wept over the hardships of the trail. "They kept swapping packs with me, imagining my pack must be lighter because I wasn't hollering." Natural selection, frontier life, and the example of the red man produced in America a type of great physical self-control, gritty, uncomplaining, merciless to the body through fear of becoming "soft." To this roaming, hunting, exploring, adventurous breed what greater contrast is there than the denizens of the Ghetto? The second generation, to be sure, overtop their parents and are going in for athletics. Hebrews under Irish names abound in the prize-ring, and not long ago a sporting editor printed the item, " Jack Sulli- van received a letter in Yiddish yesterday from his sister." Still, it will be long before they pro- duce the stoical type who blithely fares forth into the wilderness, portaging his canoe, poling it against the current, wading in the torrents, living on bacon and beans, and sleeping on the ground, all for "fun" or "to keep hard." AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 291 VITALITY "The Slavs," remarks a physician, "are immune to certain kinds of dirt. They can stand what would kill a white man. ' ' The women do not have puerperal fever, as our women would under their conditions. The men violate every sanitary law, yet survive. The Slavs come from a part of the world in which never more than a third of the children have grown up. In every generation, dirt, ignorance, superstition, and lack of medical attention have winnowed out all hut the sturdiest. Among Americans, two-thirds of the children grow up, which means that we keep alive many of the tenderer, who would certainly have perished in the Slavic world. There is, however, no illu- sion more grotesque than to suppose that our peo- ple is to be rejuvenated by absorbing these mil- lions of hardy peasantry, that, to quote a cham- pion of free immigration, "The new-comers in America wiU bring fresh, vigorous blood to a rather sterile and inbred stock." The fact is that the immigrant stock quickly loses here its distinc- tive ruggedness. The physicians practising among rural Poles notice a great saving of infant life under American conditions. Says one: "I see immigrant women and their grown daughters having infants at the same time, and the children of the former will die of the things that the chil- dren of the latter get well of. The same holds when the second generation and the third bear at the same time. The latter save their children 292 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW better than the former." The result is a marked softening of fiber between the immigrant women and the granddaughters. Among the latter are many of a finer, but frailer, mold, who would be ruined in health if they worked in the field the third day after confinement, as grandmother did. In the old country there were very few of this type who survived infancy in a peasant family. There is, then, no lasting revitalization from this tide of life. If our people has become weak, no transfusion of peasants will set it on its feet again; for their blood too, soon thins. The trouble, if you call it that, is not with the Amer- ican people, but with the wide diffusion among us of a civilized manner of life. Where the struggle for existence is mitigated not merely for the upper quarter of society, as formerly in the Old World, but for the upper three-quarters, as in this and other democratic countries, the effects of keeping alive the less hardy are bound to show. The rem- edy for the alleged degeneration of our stock is simple, but drastic. If we want only constitutions that can stand hardship and abuse, let us treat the young as they are treated in certain poverty- stricken parts of Russia. Since the mother is obhged to pass the day at work in distant fields, the nursling of a few months is left alone, crawling about on the dirt floor of the hut and comforting itself, when it cries from hunger, by sucking poultices of chewed bread tied to its hands and feet. AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 293 MORALITY That the Mediterranean peoples are morally below the races of northern Europe is as certain as any social fact. Even when they were dirty, ferocious barbarians, these blonds were truth- tellers. Be it pride or awkwardness or lack of imagination or fair-play sense, something has held them back from the nimble lying of the southern races. Immigration officials find that the dif- ferent peoples are as day and night in point of veracity, and report vast trouble in extracting the truth from certain brunet nationalities. Some champions of immigration have become broad-minded enough to think small of the cardi- nal virtues. The Syrians, on Boston testimony, took "great pains to cheat the charitable soci- eties" and are "extremely untrustworthy and un- reliable." Their defender, however, after ad- mitting their untruthfulness, explains that their lying is altruistic. If, at the fork of a road, you ask a Syrian your way, he will, in sheer transport of sympathy, study you to discover what answer will most please you. * ' The Anglo-Saxon variety of truthfulness," she adds, "is not a Syrian characteristic"; but, "if truthfulness includes loyalty, ready self-denial to promote a cause that seems right, the Syrian is to that extent truth- ful." Quoting a Syrian's admission that his fel- low-merchants pay their debts for their credit's sake, but will cheat the customer, she comments, "This, however, does not seem to be exclusively 294 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW a Syrian vice." To such miserable paltering does a sickly sentimentality lead. In southern Europe, team-work along all lines is limited by selfishness and bad faith. Profes- sor Fairchild notes "the inveterate factionalism and commercial dishonesty so characteristic of the [Greek] race," "the old dishonesty and in- ability to work together." "One of the maxims of Greek business life, translated into the Amer- ican vemacalar, is 'Put out the other fellow's eye.' " "These people seemed incapable of carying on a large cooperative business with har- mony and success." Nothing less than verminous is the readiness of the southern Europeans to prey upon their fel- lows. Never were British or Scandinavian im- migrants so bled by fellow-countrymen as are South Italian, Greek and Semitic immigrants. Their spirit of mutual helpfulness saved them from padrone, "banker," and Black Hand. Among our South Italians this spirit shines out only when it is a question of shielding from American justice some cut-throat of their own race. The Greek is full of tricks to skin the greenhorn. A grocer will warn fellow-country- men who have just established themselves in his town that he will have the police on them for vio- lating municipal ordinances unless they buy gro- ceries from him. The Greek mill-hand sells the greenhorn a job, and takes his chances on the foreman giving the man work. A Greek who AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 295 knows a little English will get a Greek peddler arrested in order that he may get the interpre- ter's fee. The Greek boot-black who has freed himself from his serfdom, instead of showing up the system, starts a place of his own, and exploits his help as mercilessly as ever he was exploited. The Northerners seem to surpass the southern Europeans in innate ethical endowment. Com- parison of their behavior in marine disasters shows that discipline, sense of duty, presence of mind, and consideration for the weak are much more characteristic of northern Europeans. The southern Europeans, on the other hand, are apt, in their terror, to forget discipline, duty, women, children, everything but the saving of their own lives. In shipwreck it is the exceptional North- erner who forgets his duty, and the exceptional Southerner who is bound by it. The suicide of Italian officers on board the doomed Monte Ta- bor, the Notice, and the Ajace, is in striking con- trast to the sense of responsibility of the North- erners in charge of the Cimhria, the Geiser, the Strathcona, and the City of Paris. Compare the mad struggle for the boats among the southern Europeans on La Bourgogne, the Ailsa, and the Utopia, with the self-possession of the Scandina- vian emigrants on the Waesland and the Danmark, and the consideration for women and children shown on the sinking Mohegan, the Waesland, and the Titanic. Among all nationalities the Amer- icans bear the palm for coolness, orderly saving of life, and consideration for the weak in shipwreck, 296 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW but they will lose these traits in proportion as they absorb excitable mercurial blood from south- ern Europe. NATUKAL, ABILITY The performance of the foreign-born ajid their children after they have had access to American opportunities justifies the democrat's faith that latent capacity exists all through the humbler strata of society. On the other hand, it also con- firms the aristocrat's insistence that social ranks correspond somewhat with the grades of natural ability existing within a people. The descend- ants of Europe's lowly are to be met in all the upper levels of American society, but not so fre- quently as the descendents of those who were high or rising in the land they left. In respect to the value it contains, a stream of immigrants may be representative, super-repre- sentative, or sub -representative of the home peo- ple. When it is a fair sample, it is representa- tive; when it is richer in wheat and poorer in chaff, it is super-representative; when the reverse is the case, it is sub-representative. What counts here, of course, is not the value the immigrants may have acquired by education or experience, but that fundamental worth which does not de- pend on opportunity, and which may be trans- mitted to one's descendants. Now, in the present state of our knowledge, it is perhaps risky to make a comparison in ability between the races which contributed the old immigration and those which AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 297 are supplying the new immigration. Though backward, the latter may contain as good stuff. But it is fair to assume that a super-representa- tive immigration from one stock is worth more to us than a sub-representative immigration from another stock, and that an influx which sub-repre- sents a European people will thin the blood of the American people. Many things have decided whether Europe should send America cream or skimmed milk. Religious or political oppression is apt to drive out the better elements. Racial oppression can- not be evaded by mere conformity; hence the emi- gration it sets up is apt to be representative. An unsubdued and perilous land attracts the more bold and enterprising. The seekers of home- steads include men of better stuff than the job- seekers attracted by high wages for unskilled labor. Only economic motives set in motion the sub-common people, but even in an economic emi- gration the early stage brings more people of initiative than the later. The deeper, straighter, and smoother the channels of migration, the lower the stratum they can tap. It is not easy to value the early elements that were wrought into the American people. Often a stream of immigration that started with the best drained from the lower levels after it had worn itself a bed. It is therefore only in a broad way that I venture to classify the principal colo- nial migrations as follows : Super-representative: English Pilgrims, Puri- 298 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW tans, Quakers, Catholics, Scotch Covenanters, French Huguenots, German sectaries. Representative: English of Virginia, Mary- land, and the Carolinas, Scotch-Irish, Scotch Highlanders, Dutch, and Swedes. Sub-representative: English of early Georgia, transported English, eighteenth-century Ger- mans. In our national period the Germans of 1848 stand out as a super-representative flow. The Irish stream has been representative, as was also the early German migration. The German inflow since 1870 has brought us very few of the elite of their people, and I have already given reasons for believing that the Scandinavian stream is not altogether representative. Our immigration from Great Britain has distinctly fallen off in grade since the chances in America came to be less at- tractive than those in the British Empire. How- ever, no less an authority than Sir Richard Cart- wright thinks that "between 1866 and 1896 one- third at least of the whole male population of Canada between the ages of twenty and forty found their way to the United States," and this "included an immense percentage of the most intelligent and adventurous." To-day we recip- rocate by sending Western farmers with capital into the Canadian Northwest. Our loss has amounted to as many as 100,000 in a single year. Oppression is now out of fashion over most of Europe, and our public lands are gone. Eco- nomic motives more and* more bring us immi- AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 299 grants, and such motives will not uproot the edu- cated, the propertied, the established, the well con- nected. The children of success are not migrat- ing, which means that we get few scions from families of proved capacity. Europe retains most of her brains, but sends multitudes of the common and the sub-common. There is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars, Russians, South Slavs, Italians, Greeks, or Portuguese. This does not hold, however, for currents created by race discrimination or oppres- sion. The Armenian, Syrian, Finnish, and Rus- so-Hebrew streams seem representative, and the first wave of Hebrews out of Russia in the eighties was superior. The Slovaks, German Poles, Lith- uanians, Esthonians, and other restive subject groups probably send us a fair sample of their quality. EACE SUICIDE The fewer brains they have to contribute, the lower the place immigrants take among us, and the lower the place they take, the faster they mul- tiply. In 1890, in our cities, a thousand foreign- born women could show 565 children under five years of age to 309 children shown by a thousand native women. By 1900 the contribution of the foreign women had risen to 612, and that of the American women had declined to 296. From such figures some argue that the "sterile" Americans need the immigrants in order to supply popula- tion. It would be nearer the truth to argue that 300 THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW the competition of low-standard immigrants is tlie root cause of the mysterious "sterility" of Americans. Certainly their record down- to 1830 proved the Americans to be as fertile a race as ever lived, and the decline in their fertility coin- cides in time and in locality with the advent of the immigrant flood. In the words of General Francis A, Walker, *'Not only did the decline in the native element, as a whole, take place in sin- gular correspondence with the excess of foreign arrivals, but it occurred chiefly in just those re- gions" — "in those States and in the very coun- ties," he says elsewhere — "to which those new- comers most frequently resorted." "Our immigrants," says a superintendent of charities, "often come here with no standards whatever. In their homes you find no sheets on the bed, no slips on the pillows, no cloth on the table, and no towels save old rags. Even in the mud-floor cabins of the poorest negroes of the South you find sheets, pillow-slips, and towels, for by serving and associating with the whites the blacks have gained standards. But many of the foreigners have no means of getting our home standards after they are here. No one shows them. They can't see into American homes, and no Americans associate with them." The Amer- icans or Americanized immigrants who are obliged to live on wages fixed by the competition of such people must cut somewhere. If they do not choose to ' ' live in a pig-pen and bring up one 's children like pigs," they will save their standards AMERICAN AND IMMIGRANT BLOOD 303 by keeping down the size of the family. Because he keeps them clean, neatly dressed, and in school, children are an economic burden to the American. Because he lets them run wild and puts them to work early, children are an asset to the low-stand- ard foreigner. When a more-developed element is obliged to compete on the same economic plane with a less- developed element, the standards of cleanliness or decency or education cherished by the advanced element act on it like a slow poison. William does not leave as many children as 'Tonio, because he will not huddle his family into one room, eat maca- roni off a bare board, work his wife barefoot in the field, and keep his children weeding onions in- stead of at school. Even moral standards may act as poison. Once the women raisin-packers at Fresno, California, were American-born. Now the American women are leaving because of the low moral tone that prevails in the working force by reason of the coming in of foreigners with lax notions of propriety. The coarseness of speech and beha^dor among the packers is giving raisin-packing a bad name, so that American women are quitting the work and taking the next best job. Thus the very decency of the native is a handicap to success and to fecundity. As they feel the difficulty of keeping up their standards on a Slav wage, the older immigrant stocks are becoming sterile, even as the old Amer- icans became sterile. In a generation complaint will be heard that the Slavs, too, are shirking big 304 THE OLD WOELD IN THE NEW families, and that we must admit prolific Per- sians, Uzbegs, and Bokliariots, in order to otTset the fatal sterility that attacks every race after it has become Americanized. Very truly says a distinguished economist, in praise of immigration : **The cost of rearing children in the United States is rapidly rising. In many, perhaps in most cases, it is simpler, speedier, and cheaper to im- port labor than to breed it." In like vein it is said that * ' a healthy immigrant lad of eighteen is a clear $1000 added to the national wealth of the United States." Just so. *'The Roman world was laughing when it died." Any couple or any people that does not feel it has anything to transmit to its children may well reason in such fashion. A couple may reflect, "It is simpler, speedier, and cheaper for us to adopt orphans than to produce children of our own." A nation may reason, **Why burden ourselves with the rearing of chil- dren? Let them perish unborn in the womb of time. The immigrants will keep up the popula- tion." A people that has no more respect for its ancestors and no more pride of race than this deserves the extinction that surely awaits it. APPENDIX APPENDIX TABLE I ANNUAL. IMMIGRATION 1820-1913 Year ending Sept. 30 1820 8,385 1821 9,127 1822 6,911 1823 6,354 1824 7,912 1825 10,199 1826 10,837 Year ending Sept. 30 1827 18,875 1828 27,-382 1829 22,520 1830 23,322 1831 22,633 15 months ending Dec. 31 1832 60,482 Year ending Dec. 31 1833 58,640 1834 65,365 1835 45,374 1836 76,242 1837 79,340 1838 38,914 1839 68,069 1840 84,066 307 308 APPENDIX 1841 80,289 1842 104,565 9 months ending Sept. 30 1843 52,496 Year ending Sept. 30 1844 78,615 1845 114,371 1846 154,416 1847 234,968 1848 226,527 1849 297,024 1850 310,004 3 months ending Dec. 31 1850 59,976 Year ending Dec. 31 1851 379,466 1852 371,603 1853 368,645 1854 427,833 1855 200,877 1856 200,436 1857 251,306 1858 123,126 1859 121,282 1860 153,640 1861 91,918 1862 91,985 1863 176,282 1864 193,418 1865 248,120 1866 318,568 1867 315,722 6 months ending June 30 1868 138,840 APPENDIX 309 Year ending June 30 1869 352,768 1870 387,203 1871 321,350 1872 404,806 1873 459,803 1874 „ 313,339 1875 227,498 1876 169,986 1877 141,857 1878 138,469 1879 177,826 1880 457,257 1881 669,431 1882 788,992 1883..... 603,322 1884 518,592 1885 395,346 1886 334,203 1887 490,109 1888 546,889 1889 444,427 1890 455,302 1891 560,319 1892 623,084 1893 439,730 1894 285,631 1895.. 258,536 1896 343,267 1897 230,832 1898... 229,299 18'99 311,715 1900 448,572 1901 487,918 1902 648,743 310 APPENDIX 1903 857,046 1904 812,870 1905 1,026,499 1906 1,100,735 1907 1,285,349 1908 782,870 1909 751,786 1910 1,041,570 1911 878,587 1912 838,172 1913 1,197,892 1914 (11 months) 1,254,548 TABLE II TOTAL NUMBER OP IMMIGRANTS, BY DECADES 1821-1830 143,439 1871-1880 2,812,191 1831-1840 599,125 1881-1890 5,246,613 1841-1850 1,713,251 1891-1900 3,687,561 1851-1860 2,598,214 1901-1910 8,795,386 1861-1870 2,314,824 TABLE III INCREASE OF FOREIGN-BORN IN POPULATION BY DECADES Population. Increase. Increase. Census Year. Foreign-Born Percentage 1850 2,244,602 1860 4,138,697 1,894,095 84.4 1870 5,567,229 1,428,532 34.5 1880 6,679,943 1,112,714 20.0 1890 9,249,560 2,569,617 38.5 1900 10,341,276 1,091,716 11.8 1910 13,343,583 3,129,766 30.6 APPENDIX 311 TABLE IV FOREIGN-BORN IN UNITED STATES IN 1910 Per cent Country of Birth. Number. of total. Total foreign bom 13,515,886 100.0 Europe 11,791,841 87.2 Noi'thwestern Europe 6,740,400 49.9 Great Britain 1,221,283 9.0 England 877,719 6.5 Scotland 261,076 1.9 Wales 82,488 0.6 Ireland 1,352,251 10.0 Germany 2,501,333 18.5 Scandinavian countries. . . . 1,250,733 9.3 Norway 403,877 3.0 Sweden 665,207 1.9 Denmark 181,649 1.3 Netherlands (Holland), Bel- gium, and Luxemburg. . . 172,534 1.3 Netherlands 120,063 0.9 Belgium 49,400 0.4 Luxemburg 3,071 France 117,418 0.9 Switzerland 124,848 0.9 Southern and Eastern Europe 5,048,583 37.4 Portugal 59,360 0.4 Spain 22,108 0.2 Italy 1,343,125 9.9 Russia and Finland 1,732,462 12.8 Russia 1,602,782 11.9 Finland 129,680 1.0 312 APPENDIX Per cent Country op Birth. Number. of total. 4 . „ TT . 1,670,582 12.4 1,174,973 8.7 495,609 3.7 T~> _ 1 1 ' 1 220,946 1.6 65,923 0.5 11,498 0.1 4,639 5,374 101,282 0.7 Turkey in Europe 32,230 0.2 2,858 A _ • _ 191,484 1.4 56,756 0.4 67,7U 0.5 4,664 59,729 0.4 2,591 1,489,231 II.O Canada and Newioundland . 1,209,717 9.0 one /"V 0 0 385,083 2.8 819,554 6.1 5,080 An CQC 221,915 1.6 Central and South America 9,964 0.1 All other 43.330 0.3 314 APPENDIX TABLE V PEE CENT. OP IMMIGRANTS FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE AND FROM SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE, 1820 TO 1910 Northern Southern Total Other and and from specified Period. Western. Eastern. Europe, countries. 1820-1830 87.0 2.9 89.9 10.1 1831-1840 92.5 1.1 93.7 6.3 1841-1850 95.9 .3 96.2 3.8 1851-1860 94.6 .8 95.5 4.5 1861-1870 88.5 1.5 89.9 10.1 1871-1880 73.7 7.1 80.8 19.2 1881-1890 72.0 18.3 90.3 9.7 1891-1900 44.8 52.8 97.5 2.5 1901-1910 21.8 71.9 93.7 6.3 TABLE VI old and new immigration compared with respect to ability of the foreign-born to read, by race * (study of employees) Per Per cent. cent. able able Old Immi- to New Immi- to gration. read. gration. read. Canadian, French . . . 88.1 78.1 Canadian, other . , . 98.9 Croatian 70.9 Dutch 97.6 Greek 80.5 English 98.8 Hebrew, Russian . . .. 93.1 98.0 Hebrew, other .. 92.5 * Vol. I, p. 443. Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Com- mission. APPENDIX 315 Per cent. able Old Immi- to GEATiox. read. Irish 95.8 Scotch 99.5 Swedish 99.8 Welsh 98.1 Per cent, able New Immi- to GRATiox. read. Italian, North 83.3 Italian, South 67.5 Lithuanian 77.3 Magyar 91.0 Polish 79.9 Portugnese 47.5 Roumanian 82.6 Eussian 74.5 Euthenian 65.8 Servian 71.3 Slovak 84.4 Slovenian 87.5 Spanish 98.1 Syrian 63.6 TABLE VII OLD AXD KEW IMMIGRATIOX COMPARED WITH RESPECT TO FOREIGN-BORIs HUSBAXDS REPORTING WIFE ABROAD, BY RACE.* (study OF employees) Per cent Per cent Reporting Exporting Old Immi- Wife New Immi- Wife GRATIOX. Abroad. gratiok. Abroad. Canadian, French .... 1.5 Bulgarian 90.0 Dutch 3.8 Croatian 59.3 EngUsh 3.4 Greek 74.7 * VoL I, p. 460. Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Com- mission. 316 APPENDIX Per cent Reporting Old Immi- Wife GRATiON, Abroad. German 4.3 Irish 1.2 Scotch 3.2 Swedish 2.9 Welsh 1.4 Per cent Reporting New Immi- Wife GRATION. Abroad. Hebrew, Russian 12.5 Italian, North 31.6 Italian, South 36.9 Lithuanian 23.3 Magyar 43.3 Polish 23.0 Portuguese 15.9 Roumanian 73.9 Russian 45.5 Servian 64.5 Slovak 34.2 Slovenian 33.7 TABLE VIII old and new immigration compared with respect to ability to speak english.* (study of employees) Old Immigration. Nationality. Per cent. Danish 96.5 Dutch 86.1 French 68.6 German 87.5 Norwegian 96.9 Swedish 94.7 Average 82.2 New Immigration. Nationality. Per cent. Bulgarian 20.3 Croatian 50.9 Greek 33.5 South Italian 48.7 Lithuanian 51.3 Macedonian 21.1 Magyar 46.4 Montenegrin 38.0 Polish 43.5 * Vol. I, p. 477. Abstracts of Reports of the Immigration Com- mission. APPENDIX 317 Old Immigration. New Immigration. Nationality. Per cent. Nationality. Per cent. Roumanian 33.3 Euthenian 36.8 Russian 43.6 Servian 41.2 Slovak 55.6 Slovenian 51.7 Syrian 54.6 Turkish 22.5 Average . . . . . . „ .40.8 TABLE IX FOREIGN-BORN IN URBAN AND RURAL. COMMUNITIES, 1910 Old Immigration. New Immigration. Per Per Per Per Country Cent Cent Country Cent Cent of Birth. Urban. Rural. of Birth. Urban. Rural. Belgium . . . 59.6 40.4 Austria , , 72.4 27.6 Denmark . . . .48.3 51.7 Balkan States. 50.9 49.1 England . . . .72.6 27.4 Finland . 50. 50. France , , . , 69.9 30.1 71.4 28.6 Germany . . . .66.7 33.3 Hungary . ...77.3 22.7 Holland 54.9 45.1 Italy 78.1 21.9 Ireland . . . . 84.7 15.3 Portugal . ...69.6 30.4 Norway , . 42.2 57.8 Roumania . . .91.9 8.1 Scotland 72.4 27.6 Russia 87. 13. Sweden 60.6 39.4 Turkey, i n Switzerland ..53.9 46.1 Asia , . 86.7 13.3 Turkey, in Eu- "\ 79.5 20.5 318 APPENDIX FOREIGN WHITE STOCK, BY PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN: 1910. MKO-rOHS INDEX INDEX Ability, natural, 10, 12, 13; Irish, 40-44; Germans, 50, 58, 64; Scandinavians, 83-85; Italians, 113, 114; Slavs, 138, 139; Hebrews, 157-164; Finns, 169; Portuguese, 176; Levantines, 190, 193; foreign- born, 285-287, 296-299. Abstractness, Hebrew, 159-160. Agriculture, German immi- grants in, 52-53, 62; Scan- dinavians, 73-74, 86; Ital- ians, 103-104; Slavs, 126- 127; Hebrews, 147, 160; Finns, 169; Magyars, 174; Portuguese, 181 ; foreign- born, 195, 202-204. Alcoholism, Irish, 32-33; Ger- man, 60-61 ; Scandinavian, 72-73; comparative, 104-105; Slavic, 127-128, 229; Fin- nish, 169-170; Magyar, 175; Levantine, 190; foreign-born, 215, 229, 255. American traits, 23, 290, 295- 296. Americanism, origins of, 22-23. Anti-semitism, 164, 165. Assimilation, of Germans, 49- 52; of Scandinavians, 75-81; of Italians, 111-112, 213; of Slavs, 134-138; of Hebrews, 154, 165-167; of Finns, 170; of Magyars, 175; of Portu- guese, 182; of Levantines, 194; of foreign-born, 245, 250-254, 279-281, 300-303. "Assistance" for naturalized voters, 271. Attention to details, compara- tive, 44, 66. Avarice, 34, 150-155, 182-183, 188-193, 244, 246, 303. Azorean immigrants, 176, 179, 181. Balch, Professor, quoted, 127. Bankruptcy, fraudulent, 150. Bar, immigrants at the, 39, 40, 41, 89, 153. Bargain, the individual, 193. Bath houses, Finnish, 169. Bingham, Gen., quoted, 108-111. Bohemian immigrants, 123, 124, 126, 134, 135, 138, 139, 220, 252, 253. "Boss," methods of the, 269- 275. Boston, 29, 244, 260. Bound boys, Greek, 187-190. Bremer, Frederika, quoted, 69. Browning, quoted, 106. Bryce, James, quoted, 51. Bushee, Dr., quoted, 29, 145, 180, 244. Cahan, Abram, cited, 164. Camorra, the, 107. Canadian immigrants, 182, 253, 298. Cape Cod Portuguese, 179. Cape Verde immigrants, 168, 179. Capitalists and immigration, 198, 201, 210, 213-219, 286, 287. Cartwright, Sir Richard, quoted, 298. Caste spirit, growth of, 216, 219, 234-235. Caterers, Greek immigrants as, 184, 187. "Cavaliers," in Virginia, 7. Celtic race traits, 39-44, 64, 85-89. 322 INDEX Charity -seekers, immigrants as, Irish, 29; Germans, 59; Ital- ians, 117, 243; Hebrews, 149; Magyars, 173; Syrians, 293; foreign-born, 105, 240-245. Child delinquency, 245-246. Child exploitation, 112, 127, 137, 157, 180, 181, 187-190, 244, 246, 247, 303. Children, proportion of, 22. Chinese immigrants, 111, 226. Cicero, on the Jews, 143. Cities, immigrants in, 76, 112, 126, 145, 182, 202, 239-240, 244, 260, 282. Citizenship, interest of immi- grants in acquiring, 101, 112, 136, 170, 175, 181-182, 264- 266, 269-273. Civil War, tlie, 13, 41, 58. Clannishness of immigrants, Germans, 54, 57; Italians, 112, Slavs, 136-137; He- brews, 154, 166-167; Portu- guese, 182; Le\'antines, 193- 194; Irish, 260-263; foreign- born, 253. Clericalism, 123, 135, 136, 252- 253, 279-280. Coal miners, wages of, 213. Colonies, Hebrew agricultural, 147. Colonization, of immigrants, 203-204. Commercialization, 153, 238, 250. Commercialized immmigration, 183-4, 195-197, 204, 226. Congestion, of Irish, 30 ; of Ger- mans, 60; of Scandinavians, 76; of Italians, 112, 117-118; of Slavs, 126; of Hebrews, 145; of Magyars, 173-174; of Portuguese, 180; of Levan- tines 194; of foreign-born, 238-240, 244, 300-303. Convict element in the Colonies, 8-9. Cost of living, causes of high, 201-202. Courage, 30, 125-126, 262, 295. Crises and immigration, 222. Cranberry pickers, 179. Criminality, Irish, 33, 34; Ger- man, 61; Greek, 62; Scandin- avian, 72; Italian, 98, 101, 106-111; Slavic, 129; He- brew, 34, 62, 155-157; Fin- nish, 33, 169, Magyar, 175; Portuguese, 175-176. Criminals, elimination of, in the Colonies, 9. Crossing, effects of, 288-289. Cumings, quoted, 22. Dalmatians in horticulture, 203. Danish immigrants, 74, 81. Deforestation, 203. Democracy, immigrants and, 42, 54-57, '76, 91-92, 119, 136, 158, 256, 263, 264, 269, 276- 281. Deutschtum in America, 50-51, 76. Displacement, industrial, 207- 209. Dutch immigrants, 4, 70, 298. Economic character of present immigration, 183-184, 195- 197, 225, 298, 299. Education, interest of immi- grants in, 79, 98, 112, 136, 148, 157-159, 170, 181, 189, 190, 236, 246, 251-254. Elimination, 16-20, 290-292. Emigration-promoting, 195-197, 226. Emigration to Canada, 298. Emotional instability of Ital- ians, 118-119. English immigrants, 3-9, 297, 298. English, ability to speak, 76, 112, 136-137, 169, 176, 236- 237, 253-254. Ethical endowment, race con- trasts in, 293-295. Fairchild, Professor, quoted, 184, 294. Family size, 21-23, 30, 47, 71- 72, 127, 130-134, 136, 139, 236, 244, 287, 292, 299-304. INDEX 323 Fecundity, early American, 21- 23; Irish, 26, 29; Scandi- navian, 71-72; Italian, 95; Slavic, 130-134, 136, 139- 140; Portuguese, 180; for- eign-born, 236, 287j 299-304. Ferrero, quoted, 280. Feudalism, industrial, 214, 215; political, 269-272. Finnish immigrants, 168, 173, 299. Foreign stock, proportion of, 239-240, 282-285. "Forty-eighters," the, 47, 50, 57, 64. Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 11. French immigrants, 10, 14, 62, 298. Frontier, selective influence of the, 20-23. Galician Jews, degradation of, 146, 165. Gambling, 98, 105, 156. Genoese, 111. German immigrants, 10, 17, 46-66; numbers, 46-48; mo- tives of emigration, 46-48; distribution, 49; assimila- tion, 49, 52; influence, 52- 58, 79; drinking customs, 53; conviviality, 54; politics, 54-55, 259, 262, 263, 276; free-thinking, 57-58, 252 ; economic condition, 59-60; alcoholism, 60-61; criminal- ity, 61-62; occupations, 35, 36, 41, 62-63; traits, 29, 32, 63-66, 73, 81, 83, 91, 149, 160, 238; illiteracy, 70; in science, 39, 84; in agricul- ture, 44, 52, 53, 62, 86, 202, 260; race affinities, 101; in music, 103; mortality, 113; displacement, 220; quality, 298. Germany, conditions in, 48, 225, 280. Ghetto, the, 145, 149, 290. Good looks, among immigrants, 85, 113, 179, 193, 285, 286- 289. Grant, Gen., quoted, 164. Greek immigrants, 62, 182-190, 214, 236, 238, 243, 289, 294, 299. Greek physicians, memorial of, 189. Gregariousness, Italian, 117- 118; Hebrew, 145; Levan- tine, 194. Hebrew immigrants, numbers, 143, 190; sobriety, 61; pov- erty, 30, 180; quality, 145, 146, 299; occupation, 146- 148; morals, 149-155; crime, 34, 62, 155-157; children, 114, 245; traits, 31, 118, 157- 164, 289-290, 294; in poli- tics, 148, 158, 263, 274; prospects, 164-167. Helmold, quoted, 120-121. Heterogeneity, effects of, 229, 276-280. Horticulture, immigrants in, 104, 187, 202, 203. Honesty, German, 64—65; Scan- dinavian, 72, 83, 91; Finnisli, 169; Magyar, 173; North European, 294. Housing of immigrants, 26, 30, 60, 76, 112, 117, 126, 145, 169, 173, 174, 180, 216-222, 244, 300, 301. Huguenot immigrants, 10, 14, 298. Hungarian Jews, 173. Iceland, 67. Idealism, 3-4, 50, 57, 64, 81, 91, 149, 170, 269. Illiteracy, immigrant, 70; Ital- ian, 98; Slavic, 124, 136, 138; Hebrew, 145; Magyar, 174; Portuguese, 176; foreign- born, 228, 230-233. Immagination, Celtic, 40-41; Slavic, 138; Hebrew, 159; Scandinavian lack of, 85-89. Immigration Commission, quoted, 107, 135, 140, 189. 324 INDEX Immigration policy, Jewish ef- forts to control, 144-145, 150. Immodesty, 228. Independent, the, quoted, 237. Industry, immigrants in, 35, 62-63, 75, 125-126, 148, 174, 179-201, 207-209, 215-216. Infant mortality, 130, 133, 228, 291, 292. Inquisition, the, in Mexico, 14. Insanity, Irish, 28; German, 61; Scandinavian, 70; among the foreign-born, 249-250. Instability of employment, growing, 221, 222. Ireland, conditions in, 26-28; early discrimination against, 31. Irish immigrants, 24-45; num- bers, 24-25 ; motives to emi- grate, 25-26; quality, 26-28, 298 ; economic condition, 28- 32; pauperism, 29-30; un- thrift, 29-31; alcoholism, 32- 33, 60; criminality., 33-34; loyalty, 34; occupations, 35- 39, 220; progress, 3.5-39, 63; gifts, 40-45; traits, 40-5, 64, 89, 158, 159; fecundity, 71, 133; illiteracy, 70; skill, 62; in agriculture, 202; dis- placement, 207 ; in politics, 41, 42, 91, 135. 148, 259- 263, 272; in science, 84; as- similation, 49. Italian-American Civic League, 112. Italian Immigrants, distribu- tion, 96 ; social characteris- tics, 61, 70, 97, 234, 236, 238; types, 97-101; occupa- tions, 102-104, 207, 208, 213, 220; vices, 104-106; crime, 33-34, 62, 72, 106-111, 129; assimilation, 111-112; abil- ity, 113-117; traits, 117-119, 150, 219, 243; poverty, 180, 244; in agriculture, 103-104, 181, 202-203; in politics, 271, 275, 276; quality, 289. 293-295, 299. Job-buying, by immigrants, 198, 214. Journalism, immigrants in, 41, 81, 135, 146, 276. Judaism, 165-167. Kidnapping, for the Colonies, 8. Kollar, quoted, 128. Labor organizations, 41, 89, 209-210, 235. Labor, political weight of, 266. Lawlessness, 106-111, 150-157. Levantine immigrants, 190-194, 299. Like-mindedness, value of polit- ical, 276-280. Lithuanian immigrants, 62, 70, 124, 134, 140, 208, 230, 252, 254. Litigiousness. Finnish, 169. 2 Log houses, Finnish, 168. Lottery-gambling, 98, 105, 106. Love of liberty as motive for emigration, 14, 46, 47, 145, 169, 297-299. Lying, Italians, 117; Hebrews, 150; Levantines, 193; South Europeans, 293. Macedonians, 123, 175. Machine, the political, 229, 261-263, 269-275. Mafia, the, 107. Magyar, immigrants, 33, 34, 61, 168, 169, 173-175, 198, 202, 207, 208 220, 225, 238, 243. Malaria, ravages of, 19-20. Male ascejidencv, 129-134, 180, 193, 219, 235^237. Manners, Irish, 40; Germans, 53-54, 64 ; Scandinavians, 80, 82-83, 89; Italians, 118; Hebrews, 149-150; Slavs, 228. Marine disasters, race behavior in, 295-296. Maryland, convicts transported to', 8. Mechanical aptitude, want of in Italian immigrants, 113; in Greeks, 187. INDEX 325 Medicine, immigrants in, Irish, 35, 39, 41; Germans, 35, 41; Hebrews, 148. Mediterranean race, the, 97- 101, 293-295. Merit s'^stem, the, 42, 57, 261- 262. ' Michaux, quoted, 21. Middle Ages, our, 133-136, 228- 230, 232, 254-255, 279-280. Mining,, immigrants in, 35, 74, 125, 207, 208, 213, 214-216, 228. Mining conditions in West Vir- ginia, 214-215. Mittelberger, quoted, 18. Mixed marriages, 166. Mongolian immigrants, 168- 175. Morals, 34, 64-65, 72, 90-91, 101, 105-106, 117, 129, 149- 155, 169, 180-181, 193, 238, 255, 293-295. Mortality, immigrant, 17-20, 30, 71, 113, 126, 130-134, 136, 189, 234, 244, 263, 273- 274, 291-292. Municipal Government, 229 ; Irish in, 259-263; foreign- born in, 269-275. Music, immigrant contribution to, 50, 54, 62, 90, 103, 138, 279. Naturalization, extent of, 264- 266. Naturalization frauds, 272-273. Natural selection, 14-23, 61, 145, 290, 292. Neapolitans, 98-101, 105-106, 107, 113, 117-118, 243. New Bedford whalers, 176, 179. New York, insane of, 249, 250. New York State Hospital Com- mission, quoted, 249. Niceforo, Professor, cited, 98- 101. Norwegian immigrants, 68, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 82-83. Nationalism, revival of Slavic, 134-135. Occupational preferences, Irish, 35-36 ; German, 62-63 ; Scan- dinavian, 73-75; Italian, 102-104; Slavic, 124-127; Hebrew, 31; 146-148; Fin- nish, 169; Magyar, 174; Por- tuguese, 179-180; Greek, 184- 188; Levantine, 193; for- eign-born, 202-203. Oriental traits, 190, 193, 237. Oversea passage, conditions of, 17-18, 196. Padrone, the, 188-190, 272. Parks, abuse of, 149. Parties, immigrants and polit- ical, 54-57, 66, 76, 91, 117, 158, 170, 261-263. Patriotism, 136, 170, 251, 269. Pauperism, Irish, 29; Germans, 59; Scandinavians, 59; He- brew, 149; Portuguese, 180; natives, 209 ; foreign-born, 240-245. Peasantism, 135-137; 181-182, 228-233, 237, 254-256, 286, 292. Pecorini, quoted, 112. Penal transportation, 8. Penn, William, 10, 17. Pennell, Joseph, quoted, 146. Pennsylvania Germans, 10-12, 52, 298. Peonage among immigrants, 233-234. "Personal liberty," 53, 76, 276, 279. Physiognomy of immigrants, 85, 113, 285-289. Pioneer breed, the, 20-23, 282, 290, 300. Polish immigrants, 124, 126, 127, 133, 135-137, 139-140, 181, 207, 208, 220, 230, 236, 238, 244, 252, 253, 275, 291. Political mysticism, 280-281. Political psychology of races, 40-42, 66, 91-92, 119, 194, 261-262, 294-296. Political tendencies of natural- ized immigrants ; of Irish, 39, 41, 42; of Germans, 47, 326 INDEX 54-55, 66; of Scandinavians, 76, 83, 91-92; of Italians, 119; of Slavs, 136; of He- brews, 144, 148, 158, 279; of Finns, 170; of Levantines, 194; of foreign-born, 229- 230, 232, 255-256, 259-281. Polyandry, 180-181, 238. Portuguese immigrants, 105, 175-182, 202, 236, 289. Prejudice in politics, 203. Presbyterian immigrants, 12- 13. Press, the foreign, 50, 135, 146, 156, 276. Pride, Magjar, 173, 174. Prostitutes' immigrant, 155, 156, 104. Public service, Irish in the, 35- 39, 259-262; Hebrews, 148. Puritans, 3-4, 19, 54, 57, 76, 163, 238, 297. Pytheas, quoted, 72. Quakers, 10, 11, 13. Race suicide, 133-134, 299-304. Raisin pacliers, displacement of American, 303. Religion, immigrants and, 39, 46, 47, 57, 71, 82, 90, 135, 137, 157, 166, 182, 237, 252, 253. Retardation of school children, 98, 114, 119, 139, 158, 181. Roman Catholic policy, 136, 182, 251-254. Royalists, migration of, to Vir- ginia, 7. Russia, as source of immi- grants, 140, 144-145, 169. Russo-Jewish immigi'ation, 144- 146. Ruthenian immigrants, 124, 128, 236. Sabbath keeping, 166. Saloon keepers, foreign-born, 35, 36, 73. Ill, 127, 137, 255, 272, 275-276. Saracen blood, 97, 168. Scandinavian immigrants, 67- 92; numbers, 67; distribu- tion, 68, 69; social character- istics, 70-72; criminality, 72; alcoholism, 72-73; occu- pations, 44, 7.3-75; 202, 260; assimilation, 75-79 ; reaction to America, 79-81; national contrasts, 81-83; intellectual ability, 83-85, 298; traits, 32, 42, 43, 85-92, 263, 294. School, immigrants and the church. 136, 137, 182, 251- 254, 256, 279, 280. School, immigrants and the public, 79, 93, 112, 114, 119, 136, 139, 158, 159, 170, 181, 182, 246, 250-254, 256, 279- 280, 303. SciencBj immigrants in, 39, 58, 66, 81, 148. Scotch immigrants, 12, 70, 298. Scotch-Irish immigrants, 12-13, 298. Servants, indentured, 7-8. Servians, 123, 124, 134, 175. Servitude of Greek boot-blacks, 188-190. Sexes, proportion of the, 70, 96, 124. 14.5, 169, 174, 179, 183, 237-238. "Sexual hospitality," 180-181. Shoe-shining parlors, Greek, 187-190. Shrine, a miracle-working, 232. Sicilian immigrants, 101, 107, 118, 119. Slavic immigrants; race, 120- 123, 173; groups, 123-124; qualitv, 174, 299; occupa- tions, '124-127, 207, 208. 210, 213, 215, 216, 220; alcohol- ism, 33, 127-129, 229; crime, 72, 129; fecundity, 129-134, 303; assimilation, 134-138, 239; in agriculture. 126, 127, 203; abilitv, 138- 139. 246; future, 139-140; traits, 34, 219, 243, 244, 252, 254, 289, 291 292. Slovak immigrants, 86, 124, 130. 137. 208, 238, 252, 253. Sociabilitv, 32, 40-^2, 64. 82, 89-90 i 17-1 18, 194, 261-262. INDEX 327 Social decline, 127, 133-138, 145, 155-157; 228-230, 254- 256. Social evil, the, 34, 107, 129, 150, 153, 155-157, 164, 174, 175, 180-181, 228, 237-238, 245, 274. Socialism, 40, 66, 82, 159, 160, 170. Social pressure, rise of, 222- 226. South, the ; Germans in, 49 ; attitude toward Italians, 104; political spirit, 263. Spanish-American colonies, 14. Spencer, Herbert, quoted, 288. Split-family immigration, 96, 124, 137, 174, 238. Sports, immigrants in athletic, 43, 63, 90, 289, 290. Standards, contrast of, 216, 300-303. Stature of immigrants, 63, 98, 101, 102, 126, 289. Steerage traffic, volume of, 197. "Sterility," American, 299-304. Strike-breakers, immigrants as, 207, 208, 219, 236. Survival of the fittest, 17-21, 290-292. Swedish immigrants, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 82, 83, 85, 168, 169. Syrian immigrants, 61, 176, 190-194, 243, 289, 293. Tammany Hall, 274. Tariff, the protective, 198, 201. Teachers of foreign stock, 36, 43, 75, 89, 148, 254. Team work, 108, 294, 295. Temperance Finns, 170. Thomas, Professor, quoted, 129. Trachoma, 190. Trade, immigrants in, 65, 86, 103, 144-148, 150-153, 159, 184-187, 190, 193. Trade immorality, 150-153. Trade unionism, 209-210. Trickiness, 150-155. Tuberculosis, among the Scan- dinavian immigrants, 71. Teutonic traits, 29, 32, 35, 41, 42, 44, 63-66, 81, 91, 160 262, 293, 295. "United Societies," the, 276. United States Steel Corpora- tion, 210. Universities, immigrants' child- ren in, 39, 79, 81, 148, 170, 236. Veracity, Norwegians, 83 ; North Europeans, 293. Violence, tendency to, 33, 98- 99, 105-111, 118-119, 128, 129, 136, 169-70, 175, 193. Virginia, peopling of, 4-9. Von Hupka, quoted, 130. Wages, effect of immigrants on, 210-213. Walker, Francis A., quoted, 300. Wells, H. G., quoted, 255. Wergeland, Dr., quoted, 80. West, influence of the, 21-23. Wife desertion, 34, 255. Will, strength of, 13, 163. Women, position of immigrant, 40, 47, 52, 103, 128, 129-134, 136, 149, 170, 180, 190, 193, 219, 235-237, 255, 295, 303. Woods, quoted, 22. Wood's Eun, 239. Work conditions, immigrants and, 214-219. Yellow journalism and immi- gration, 233. Zangwill, quoted, 144. JV6455 .R82 The Old world in the New; the Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 1 1012 00140 9483