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 Races and immigrants in A>"6rica, 
 
 3 1924 020 334 433 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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RACES AND IMMIGRANTS 
 IN AMERICA 
 
^The^y^o 
 
o 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 JOHN R. COMMONS 
 
 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSnY 
 OF WISCONSIN 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1907 
 
 All rights reitrvei 
 
Copyright, 1907, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1907. 
 
 A //J73/ 
 
 J. S. Ouahlng & Go, — Berwick & Smitli Oo. 
 , 1 I Norwood, MsBS,, U.S.A. 
 
 YS./M 1 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 rAGE 
 
 References vii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Race and Democracy i 
 
 II. Colonial Race Elements .... 22 
 
 III. The Negro 39 
 
 IV. Nineteenth CenTury Additions ... 63 
 V. Industry 107 
 
 VI. Labor 13S 
 
 VII. City Life, Crime, and Poverty . . .160 
 
 VIII. Politics 179 
 
 IX. Amalgamation and Assimilation . . 198 
 
 Index 239 
 
 Hi 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Ellis Island, Immigrant Station . . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "Return of the Mayflower." Painting by 
 
 Boughton, 1834 opposite 24 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Mountaineers, Berea College, 
 
 Kentucky opposite 36 
 
 Counties having a Larger Proportion of Negroes 
 
 in 1900 than in 1880 .... opposite 50 
 
 Movement of Immigrants, Imports of Merchan- 
 dise PER Capita and Immigrants per 10,000 
 Population between 63-64 
 
 Aliens awaiting Admission at Ellis Island 
 
 opposite 78 
 
 Norwegian, Italian, and Arabic Types " go 
 
 Slav, Jewish, Polack, and Lithuanian Types " 96 
 
 Industrial Relations of Immigrants — igo6 
 
 between 108-109 
 American School Boys .... opposite 122 
 
 Filipino Governors " 142 
 
 Governor Johnson of Minnesota. — Swede " 154 
 
 Dr. Oronhyatekha, Mohawk Indian. Late Chief 
 
 OF Order of Foresters . . . opposite 168 
 
 Chinese Students, Honolulu . . " 186 
 
 Faculty of Tuskegee Institute . . " 202 
 
 Slavic Home Missionaries ... " 216 
 
 Aliens awaiting Admission at Ellis Island " 230 
 
 V 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOT- 
 NOTES 
 
 "America's Race Problems." A series of discussions on 
 indigenous race elements and the negro. American 
 Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XVIII, 
 No. I (igoi). 
 Atlanta University Publications: — 
 
 No. I. "Mortality among Negroes in Cities" (1896). 
 No. 2. "Social and Physical Condition of Negroes in 
 
 Cities" (1897). 
 No. 3. " Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Better- 
 ment" (1898). 
 No. 6. "The Negro Common School" (igoi). 
 No. 7. "The Negro Artisan" (1902). 
 No. 8. "The Negro Church" (1903). 
 No. 9. "Notes on Negro Crime" (1904). 
 No. 10. " A Select Bibliography of the Negro Ameri- 
 can" (1905). 
 Balch, Emily Greene, "Slav Emigration at its Source," 
 Charities, 1906. " Introductory," Jan. 6 ; " Bohemians," 
 Feb. 3 ; " Slovaks," March 3, April 7 ; " Galicia, Austrian 
 Poles, Ruthenians," May 5. 
 Bluntschli, J. K., The Theory of the State. New York, 
 
 1885. 
 Brandenburg, Broughton, Imported Americans (1904). 
 Description of trip by author and wife through southern 
 Italy and Sicily and return by steerage with immigrants. 
 Brinton, Daniel G., Religions of Primitive Peoples. New 
 York, 1897. 
 
 vii 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 Bureau of Labor, Seventh Special Report, The Slums of 
 Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia (1894). 
 Ninth Special Report, The Italians in Chicago (1897). 
 
 Burgess, John W., Reconstruction and the Constitution, 
 1866-1876. New York, 1903. 
 
 BusHEE, Frederick A., " Ethnic Factors in the Population 
 of Boston," American Economic Association, 3d Series, 
 Vol. IV, pp. 305-470 (1903). 
 
 Casson, Herbert N., Munsey^s Magazine, " The Jews in 
 America," 34 : 381 ; " The Sons of Old Scotland in Amer- 
 ica," 34 : 599 ; " The Germans in America," 34 : 694 ; " The 
 Scandinavians in America," 35:613; "The Welsh in 
 America," 35:749; "The Italians in America," 35:122; 
 "The Dutch in America," 35:238; "The Spanish in 
 America," 35 : 294. 
 
 COMAN, Katherine, " The History of Contract Labor in the 
 Hawaiian Islands," American Economic Association, 3d 
 Series, Vol. IV, No. 3 (1903). "The Negro as Peasant 
 Farmer," American Statistical Association, June, 1904, 
 
 PP- 39-54- 
 Commissioner of Education, Annual Reports, Washington. 
 Commissioner-General of Immigration, Annual Reports, 
 
 Washington. 
 Commons, J. R., Proportional Representation. New York, 
 
 1907. 
 Cutler, James E., 'Lynch Law. An Investigation into the 
 
 History of Lynching in the United States. New York, 
 
 1905. 
 De Forest and Veillier, The Tenement Hotise Problem, 
 
 2 vols. New York, 1903. 
 Du Bois, W. E. B., The Philadelphia Negro. Philadelphia, 
 
 1899 ; The Soul of Black Folk. New York, 1903 ; "Ne- 
 groes," Twelfth Census, Supplementary Analysis, pp. 185- 
 
 275 ; "The Negro Farmer," pp. 511-579. 
 Eaton, Dorm an B., The Civil Service in Great Britain. 
 
 New York, 1880. 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 Emigration to the United States, Special Consular Re- 
 ports, Vol. XXX. Department of Commerce and Labor, 
 1904. 
 
 Facts about Immigration. Reports of Conferences of the , 
 Immigration Department of the National Civic Federation, 
 Sept. 14 and Dec. 12, 1906. New York, 1907. 
 
 Federation. Quarterly Journal of Federation of Churches and 
 Christian Organizations, New York. Especially June, July, 
 December, 1902, March, June, October, 1903. Also annual 
 reports and sociological canvasses of the Federation. 
 
 FiSKE, John, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, 2 vols. New 
 York, 1897. 
 
 Fleming, Walter L., Civil War and Reconstruction in 
 Alabama. New York, 1897. 
 
 Franklin, F. J., The Legislative History of Naturalization 
 in the United States. Chicago, 1906. 
 
 Grose, Howard B., Aliens or Americans? Forward Mis- 
 sion Study Courses. New York, 1906. 
 
 Hall, Prescott F., Immigration and its Effect upon the 
 United States. New York, 1906. 
 
 Hampton Negro Conference, Annual, 1897-1901. 
 
 Hanna, Charles A., The Scotch-Irish, 2 vols. New York, 
 1902. 
 
 Haw An, Reports on. United States Bureau of Labor, ist 
 Report, Sen. Doc. 169, 57th Congress, ist Sess., 13 : 4231 ; 
 2d Report, Bulletin No. 47 (1903) ; 3d Report, Bulletin 
 No. 66 (1906). 
 
 Hoffman, Frederick L., " Race Traits and Tendencies of 
 the American Negro," Publications of the American Eco- 
 nomic Association, Vol. XI, Nos. i, 2, 3 (1896). 
 
 Huebner, Grover G., "The Americanization of the Immi- 
 grant," American Academy of Political and Social Science, 
 May, 1906, p. 191. 
 
 Hull House Maps and Papers, A Presentation of Nationali- 
 ties and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, by resi- 
 dents of Hull House. New York, 1895. 
 ix 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 Hunter, Robert, Poverty. New York, 1904. Chapter VI, 
 " The Immigrant." 
 
 Immigration Laws and Regulations and Chinese Exclusion 
 Laws, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Immigration Restriction League, Prescott F. Hall, Sec- 
 retary, Boston, Mass. Leaflets. 
 
 Industrial Commission, Vol. XV, Immigration and Edu- 
 cation; Vol. XIX, Miscellaneous (1901). 
 
 Jackson, Helen Hunt, A Century of Dishonor. New 
 York, 1 88 1. 
 
 Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, San Fran- 
 cisco. Leaflets. 
 
 Jenks, J. W., Certain Economic Questions in the English 
 and Dutch Colonies in the Orient. War Department, Bu- 
 reau of Insular Affairs, 1902, Doc. No. 168. 
 
 Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Am Society, 
 Annual Reports. New York. 
 
 Kellor, Frances A., Out of Work. New York, 1904. 
 
 Kelsey, Carl, The Negro Farmer. Chicago, 1903. Also 
 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
 Science, January, 1903. 
 
 King and Okey, Italy To-day. London, 1901. 
 
 KuczYNSKi, R., " The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign 
 Born Population in Massachusetts,'' Quarterly Journal of 
 Economics, November, igoi, February, igo2. "Die Ein- 
 wanderungspolitik und die Bevolkerungsfrage der Ve- 
 reinigten Staaten von Amerika," Volkswirthschaftliche 
 Zeitfragen. Berlin, 1903. 
 
 Lazare, Bernard, Antisemitism, Its History and Causes. 
 New York, 1903. 
 
 Library of Cosgs.'ess, Select List of References on the Negro 
 Question (1903). List of Works relating to the Germans 
 in the United States (1904). Select List of References on 
 Chinese Immigration (1904). Fourteenth Amendment. 
 List of Discussions of Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- 
 X 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 ments with Special Reference to Negro Suffrage (1906). 
 List of References on Naturalization (1907). 
 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Historical and Political Essays. 
 Boston, 1892. 
 
 Lord, Trenor, and Barrows, The Italian in America, .y 
 New York, 1905. Especially Italians in American agri- 
 culture. 
 
 Mallock, W. H., Aristocracy and Evolution. New York, 
 1898. 
 
 Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics. New York, 
 1 891. 
 
 Merrlaja, G. S., The Negro and the Nation. New York, 1906. 
 
 Muirhead, James F., The Land of Contrasts. London 
 and New York, 1900. 
 
 MiJNSTERBERG, HuGO, American Traits. New York, 1902. 
 
 Naturalization, Report to the President of the 
 Commission on. Submitted Nov. 8, 1905, 59th Cong., 
 1st Sess., H. R. Doc. 46. 
 
 Negro. Series of Articles on the Reconstruction Period, 
 Atlantic Monthly. " The Reconstruction of the Southern 
 States," Woodrow Wilson, 87 : i ; " The Conditions of the 
 Reconstruction Problem," Hilary A. Herbert, 87 : 145 ; 
 "The Freedman's Bureau," W. E. B. Du Bois, 87:354; 
 "Reconstruction in South Carolina," Daniel H. Chamber- 
 lain, 87:473; "The Ku-Klux Movement," William G. 
 Brown, 87:634; "Washington during Reconstruction," 
 S. W. McCall, 87:817; "Reconstruction and Disfran- 
 chisement," Editors, 88:31; "New Orleans and Recon- 
 struction," Albert Phelps, 88 : I2i ; « The Southern People 
 during Reconstruction," Thomas Nelson Page, 88 : 289 ; 
 " The Undoing of Reconstruction," William A. Dunning, 
 
 88:437- 
 
 United States Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 22, " The 
 Negro in the Black Belt" ; No. 32, " The Negroes of Sandy 
 Spring, Maryland " ; No. 35, " The Negro Landholder of 
 Georgia " ; No. 37, " The Negroes of Litwalton, Virginia " ; 
 No. 38, " Negroes of Cinclare Central Factory and Calu- 
 xi 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 met Plantation, Louisiana"; No. 48, "The Negroes of 
 Xenia, Ohio." 
 
 "Negroes, Social Interests of, in Northern Cities." 
 Charities, special number, Oct. 7, 1905. 
 
 Ripley, W. Z., The Races of Europe. New York, 1899. 
 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, The Winning of the West, 4 vols. 
 New York, 1889-1894. 
 
 Rosenberg, Edward, " Chinese Workers in China," " Fili- 
 pinos as Workmen," "Labor Conditions in Hawaii," 
 American Federationist, August, October, December, 
 1905. 
 
 Ross, Edward A., " The Causes of Race Superiority," Annals 
 of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 
 July, 1901, pp. 67-89. The notable address in which the 
 term " race suicide " was coined. 
 
 RowE, Leo S., The United States and Porto Rico. New 
 York, 1904. 
 
 Semple, Ellen Churchill, American History and its 
 Geographic Conditions. New York, 1903. " The Anglo- 
 Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains : A Study in Anthro- 
 pogeography," Geographical Journal, 17 : 588 (1901). 
 
 Slav in America, The, Charities, December, 1904. De- 
 scriptive articles by representatives of the several Slav 
 nationalities. 
 
 Smith, R. M., Emigration and Immigration. New York, 
 1890. "Assimilation of Nationalities in the United 
 States," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. IX, pp. 426-444, 
 650-670 (1894). 
 
 Stewart, Ethelbert, "Influence of Trade Unions on 
 Immigrants," Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 56. 
 
 Stone, A. H., "The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta," 
 American Economic Association, 3d Series, Vol. Ill, 
 pp. 235-278 (1901). "The Mulatto Factor in the Race 
 Problem," Atlantic Monthly, May, 1903. "A Plantation 
 Experiment," Quarterly Journal Economics, 19:270 
 (1905). "The Italian Cotton Grower: The Negro's 
 Problem," South Atlantic Quarterly, 4:45 (1905). 
 xii 
 
REFERENCES CITED IN FOOTNOTES 
 
 Suffrage, Suppression of the. Report of the Committee 
 on Political Reform of the Union League Club. New 
 York, 1903. 
 
 Thomas, W. H., The American Negro, 1901. 
 
 TiLLiNGHAST, Joseph A., "The Negro in Africa and 
 America," American Economic Association, 3d Series, 
 Vol. Ill, No. 2 (1902). 
 
 Van Vorst, Mrs. John and Marie, TJie Woman who 
 Toils. New York, 1903. Contains introduction by 
 President Roosevelt. 
 
 Walker, Francis A., Discussions in Economics and Sta- 
 tistics, 1 vols., 1897. 
 
 Ward, Robert De C, " Sane Methods of Regulating Im- 
 migration," Review of Reviews, March, igo6. 
 
 Warne, Frank Julian, The Slav Invasion and the Mine 
 Workers, 1904. 
 
 Washington, Booker T., The Future of the American 
 Negro, i<po. Up from Slavery, 1^1. 
 
 Watson, Elkanah, Men and Times of the Revolution. 
 Edited by his son, Winslow C. Watson, 2d edition. New 
 York, 1 861. 
 
 Welfare Work, Conference on, National Civic Federa- 
 tion. New York, 1904. 
 
 Whelpley, James D., TheProblemof the Immigrant, lo/o^. 
 Emigration laws of European countries and immigration 
 laws of British Colonies and the United States. 
 
 Woods, R. A., The City Wilderness, 1898. Americans in 
 Process, 1902. 
 
 xiu 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN 
 AMERICA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 " All men are created equal." So wrote Thomas 
 Jefferson, and so agreed with him the delegates from 
 the American colonies. But we must not press them 
 too closely nor insist on the literal interpretation of 
 their words. They were not pubUshing a scientific 
 treatise on himian nature nor describing the physical, 
 intellectual, and moral qualities of different races 
 and different individuals, but they were bent upon 
 a practical object in politics. They desired to sus- 
 tain before the world the cause of independence by 
 such appeals as they thought would have effect; and 
 certainly the appeal to the sense of equal rights 
 before God and the law is the most powerful that can 
 be addressed to the masses of any people. This is 
 the very essence of American democracy, that one 
 man should have just as large opportvmity as any 
 other to make the most of himself, to come forward 
 and achieve high standing in any calling to which 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 he is inclined. To do this the bars of privilege have 
 one by one been thrown down, the suffrage has been 
 extended to every man, and public office has been 
 opened to any one who can persuade his fellow- voters 
 or their representatives to select him. 
 
 But there is another side to the successful opera- 
 tions of democracy. It is not enough that equal 
 opportimity to participate in making and enforcing 
 the laws should be vouchsafed to all — it is equally 
 important that all should be capable of such partici- 
 pation. The individuals, or the classes, or the races, 
 who through any mental or moral defect are unable 
 to assert themselves beside other individuals, classes, 
 or races, and to enforce their right to an equal voice 
 in determining the laws and conditions which govern 
 all, are just as much deprived of the privilege as 
 though they were excluded by the constitution. In 
 the case of individuals, when they sink below the 
 level of joint participation, we recognize them as 
 belonging to a defective or criminal or pauper class, 
 and we provide for them, not on the basis of their 
 rights, but on the basis of charity or punishment. 
 Such classes are exceptions in point of numbers, and 
 we do not feel that their non-participation is a flaw 
 in the operations of democratic government. But 
 when a social class or an entire race is unable to 
 command that share in conducting government to 
 which the laws entitle it, we recognize at once that 
 democracy as a practical institution has in so far 
 broken down, and that, under the forms of democ- 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 racy, there has developed a class oligarchy or a 
 race oligarchy. 
 
 Two things, therefore, are necessary for a demo- 
 cratic government such as that which the American 
 people have set before themselves : equal oppor- 
 tunities before the law, and equal ability of classes and 
 races to use those opportunities. If the first is lack- 
 ing, we have legal oligarchy; if the second is lacking, 
 we have actual oligarchy disguised as democracy. 
 
 Now it must be observed that, compared with 
 the first two centuries of our nation's history, the 
 present generation is somewhat shifting its ground 
 regarding democracy. While it can never rightly 
 be charged that our fathers overlooked the inequali- 
 ties of races and individuals, yet more than the pres- 
 ent generation did they regard with hopefulness the 
 educational value of democracy. "True enough," 
 they said, " the black man is not equal to the white 
 man, but once free him from his legal bonds, open 
 up the schools, the professions, the businesses, and the 
 offices to those of his number who are most aspir- 
 ing, and you will find that, as a race, he will advance 
 favorably in comparison with his white fellow- 
 citizens." 
 
 It is now nearly forty years since these opportunities 
 and educational advantages were given to the negro, 
 not only on equal terms, but actually on terms of 
 preference over the whites, and the fearful collapse 
 of the experiment is recognized even by its partisans 
 as something that was inevitable in the nature of the 
 
 3 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 race at that stage of its development. We shall 
 have reason in the following pages to enter more fully 
 into this discussion, because the race question in 
 America has found its most intense expression in the 
 relations between the white and the negro races, 
 and has there shown itself to be the most fimdamental 
 of all American social and political problems. For 
 it was this race question that precipitated the Civil 
 War, with the ominous problems that have followed 
 upon that catastrophe; and it is this same race prob- 
 lem that now diverts attention from the treatment of 
 those pressing economic problems of taxation, cor- 
 porations, trusts, and labor organizations which 
 themselves originated in the Civil War. The race 
 problem in the South is only one extreme of the same 
 problem in the great cities of the North, where popu- 
 lar government, as our forefathers conceived it, has 
 been displaced by one-man power, and where a pro- 
 found distrust of democracy is taking hold upon the 
 educated and property-holding classes who fashion 
 public opinion. 
 
 This changing attitude toward the educational value 
 of self-government has induced a more serious study 
 of the nature of democratic institutions and of the 
 classes and races which are called upon to share in 
 them. As a people whose earlier hopes have been 
 shocked by the hard blows of experience, we are be- 
 ginning to pause and take invoice of the heterogene- 
 ous stocks of humanity that we have admitted to the 
 management of our great political enterprise. We 
 
 4 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 are trying to look beneath the surface and to in- 
 quire whether there are not factors of heredity and 
 race more fundamental than those of education and 
 environment. We find that our democratic theories 
 and forms of government were fashioned by but one 
 of the many races and peoples which have come within 
 their practical operation, and that that race, the so- 
 called Anglo-Saxon, developed them out of its own 
 insular experience unhampered by inroads of alien 
 stock. When once thus established in England and 
 further developed in America we find that other 
 races and peoples, accustomed to despotism and 
 even savagery, and wholly unused to self-government, 
 have been thrust into the delicate fabric. Like a 
 practical people as we pride ourselves, we have begun 
 actually to despotize our institutions in order to con- 
 trol these dissident elements, though still optimis- 
 tically holding that we retain the original democracy. 
 The earUer problem was mainly a political one — 
 how to unite into one self-governing nation a scat- 
 tered population with the wide diversity of natural 
 resources, chmates, and interests that mark a coimtry 
 soon to stretch from ocean to ocean and from the 
 arctics to the subtropics. The problem now is a 
 social one, — how to luiite into one people a congeries 
 of races even more diverse than the resources and 
 climates from which they draw their subsistence. 
 That motto, " E pluribus unum," which in the past 
 has guided those who through constitutional debate 
 and civil war worked out our form of government, 
 
 S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 must now again be the motto of those who would 
 work out the more fundamental problem of divergent 
 races. Here is something deeper than the form of 
 government — it is the essence of government — for 
 it is that union of the hearts and lives and abili- 
 ties of the people which makes government what it 
 really is. 
 
 The conditions necessary for democratic govern- 
 ment are not merely the constitutions and laws which 
 guarantee equahty, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
 ness, for these after all are but paper documents. 
 They are not merely freedom from foreign power, 
 for the Australian colonies enjoy the most demo- 
 cratic of all governments, largely because they are 
 owned by another country which has protected them 
 from foreign and civil wars. Neither are wealth and 
 prosperity necessary for democracy, for these may 
 tend to luxury, inequality, and envy. World power, 
 however glorious and enticing, is not helpful to de- 
 mocracy, for it inclines to militarism and centraliza- 
 tion, as did Rome in the hands of an emperor, or 
 Venice in the hands of an oligarchy. The true 
 foundations of democracy are in the character of the 
 people themselves, that is, of the individuals who 
 constitute the democracy. These are: first, inteUi- 
 gence — the power to weigh evidence and draw sound 
 conclusions, based on adequate information; second, 
 manliness, that which the Romans called virility, 
 and which at bottom is dignified self-respect, self- 
 control, and that self-assertion and jealousy of en- 
 
 6 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 croachment which marks those who, knowing their 
 rights, dare maintain them; third, and equally im- 
 portant, the capacity for cooperation, that willing- 
 ness and ability to organize, to trust their leaders, 
 to work together for a common interest and toward 
 a common destiny, a capacity which we variously 
 designate as patriotism, public spirit, or self-govern- 
 ment. These are the basic qualities which underlie 
 democracy, — intelligence, manliness, cooperation. 
 If they are lacking, democracy is futile. Here is the 
 problem of races, the fundamental division of man- 
 kind. Race differences are established in the very 
 blood and physical constitution. They are most 
 difficult to eradicate, and they yield only to the slow 
 processes of the centuries. Races may change their 
 religions, their forms of government, their modes of 
 industry, and their languages, but imdemeath all 
 these changes they may continue the physical, mental, 
 and moral capacities and incapacities which deter- 
 mine the real character of their religion, government, 
 industry, and literature. Race and heredity furnish 
 the raw material, education and environment furnish 
 the tools, with which and by which social institutions 
 are fashioned; and in a democracy race and heredity 
 are the more decisive, because the very education and 
 environment which fashion the oncoming generations 
 are themselves controlled through universal suffrage 
 by the races whom it is hoped to educate and elevate. 
 Social Classes. — Closely connected with race divi- 
 sion in its effect upon democracy are the divisions 
 
 7 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 between social classes. In America we are wont to 
 congratulate ourselves on the absence of classes with 
 their accompanying hatred and envy. Whether we 
 shall continue thus to commend ourselves depends 
 partly on what we mean by social classes. If we 
 compare our situation with an extreme case, that of 
 India/ where social classes have been hardened into 
 rigid castes, we can see the coimection between races 
 and classes. For it is generally held that the castes 
 of India originated in the conquests by an Aryan race 
 of an indigenous dark or colored race. And while 
 the clear-cut race distinctions have been blended 
 through many centuries of amalgamation, yet it is 
 most apparent that a gradation in the color of the 
 skin follows the gradation in social position, from 
 the light-colored, high-caste Brahman to the dark- 
 colored, low-caste Sudra, or outcast pariah. Race 
 divisions have been forgotten, but in their place 
 religion has sanctified a division even more rigid than 
 that of race, for it is sacrilege and defiance of the 
 gods when a man of low caste ventures into the 
 occupation and calling of the high caste. India's 
 condition now is what might be conceived for our 
 Southern states a thousand years from now, when 
 the black man who had not advanced to the lighter 
 shades of mulatto should be excluded from all pro- 
 fessions and skilled trades and from all public offices, 
 and should be restricted to the coarsest kind of ser- 
 vice as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agri- 
 
 » Bluntschli, "Theory of the State," pp. io8-i8i. 
 8 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 cultural plantations. Confined to this limited occu- 
 pation, with no incentive to economize because of 
 no prospect to rise above his station, and with his 
 numbers increasing, competition would reduce his 
 wages to the lowest limit consistent with the continu- 
 ance of his kind. Such a development is plainly 
 going on at the present day, and we may feel rea- 
 sonably certain that we can see in our own South 
 the very historical steps by which in the forgotten 
 centuries India proceeded to her rigid system of 
 castes. 
 
 There is lacking but one essential to the Indian 
 system; namely, a religion which ascribes to God 
 himself the inequalities contrived by man. For 
 the Indian derives the sacred Brahman from the 
 mouth of God, to be His spokesman on earth, while 
 the poor Sudra comes from the feet of God, to be for- 
 ever the servant of all the castes above him. But the 
 Christian religion has set forth a different theory, 
 which ascribes to God entire impartiality toward 
 races and individuals. He has " made of one blood 
 all nations." It is out of this doctrine that the so- 
 called " self-evident " assertion in the Declaration of 
 Independence originated, and it is this doctrine which 
 throughout the history of European civihzation has 
 contributed to smoothen out the harsh lines of caste 
 into the less definite lines of social classes. For it 
 must be remembered that Europe, like India, is built 
 upon conquest, and the earlier populations were re- 
 duced to the condition of slaves and serfs to the 
 
 9 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 conquering races. True, there was not the extreme 
 opposition of white and colored races which distin- 
 guished the conquests of India, and this is also one 
 of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually 
 gave way and races coalesced. Nevertheless, the 
 peasantry of Europe to-day is in large part the 
 product of serfdom and of that race-subjection which 
 produced serfdom. Herein we may find the source 
 of that arrogance on the one hand and subserviency 
 on the other, which so closely relate class divisions to 
 race divisions. The European peasant, says Pro- 
 fessor Shaler,' " knows himself to be by birthright a 
 member of an inferior class, from which there is 
 practically no chance of escaping. ... It is char- 
 acteristic of peasants that they have accepted this 
 inferior lot. For generations they have regarded 
 themselves as separated from their fellow-citizens of 
 higher estate. They have no large sense of citizenly 
 motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any 
 part of the public life save that which lies within 
 their own narrow round of action." 
 
 How different from the qualities of the typical 
 American citizen whose forefathers have erected our 
 edifice of representative democracy! It was not 
 the peasant class of Europe that sought these shores 
 in order to found a free government. It was the 
 middle class, the merchants and yeomen, those who 
 in religion and politics were literally " protestants," 
 and who possessed the intelligence, manliness, and 
 
 ' Atlantic Monthly, May, 1903, p. 649. 
 10 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 public spirit which urged them to assert for them- 
 selves those inalienable rights which the church or 
 the state of their time had arrogated to itself. With 
 such a social class democracy is the only acceptable 
 form of government. They demand and secure 
 equal opportunities because they are able to rise 
 to those opportunities. By their own inherent na- 
 ture they look forward to and aspire to the highest 
 positions. 
 
 But the peasants of Europe, especially of Southern 
 and Eastern Europe, have been reduced to the quali- 
 ties similar to those of an inferior race that favor 
 despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. 
 Their only avenues of escape from their subordinate 
 positions have been through the army and the church, 
 and these two institutions have drawn from the peas- 
 ants their ablest and brightest intellects into a life 
 which deprived them of ofifspring. " Among the 
 prosperous folk there have been ever many classes 
 of occupations tempting the abler youths, while 
 among the laborers the church has afforded the easiest 
 way to rise, and that which is most tempting to the 
 intelligent. The result has been, that while the 
 priesthood and monastic orders have systematically 
 debihtated all the populations of Catholic Europe, 
 their influence has been most efi&cient in destroying 
 talent in the peasant class." ' 
 
 Thus it is that the peasants of Catholic Europe, 
 who constitute the bulk of our immigration of the 
 
 ' Shaler, p. 651. 
 II 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 past thirty years, have become almost a distinct race, 
 drained of those superior qualities which are the 
 foundation of democratic institutions. If in America 
 our boasted freedom from the evils of social classes 
 fails to be vindicated in the future, the reasons will be 
 found in the immigration of races and classes in- 
 competent to share in our democratic opportunities. 
 Already in the case of the negro this division has 
 hardened and seems destined to become more rigid. 
 Therein we must admit at least one exception to our 
 claim of immunity from social classes. Whether 
 with our pubUc schools, our stirring politics, our 
 ubiquitous newspapers, our common language, and 
 our network of transportation, the children of the 
 European immigrant shall be able to rise to the op- 
 portunities unreached by his parents is the largest and 
 deepest problem now pressing upon us. It behooves 
 us as a people to enter into the practical study of 
 this problem, for upon its outcome depends the fate 
 of government of the people, for the people, and by the 
 people. 
 
 Races in the United States. — We use the term 
 " race " in a rather loose and elastic sense; and 
 indeed we are not culpable in so doing, for the ethnog- 
 raphers are not agreed upon it. Races have been 
 classified on the basis of color, on the basis of lan- 
 guage, on the basis of supposed origin, and in these 
 latter days on the basis of the shape of the skull. 
 For our purpose we need consider only those large 
 and apparent divisions which have a direct bearing 
 
 12 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 on the problem of assimilation, referring those who 
 seek the more subtle problems to other books.' 
 
 Mankind in general has been divided into three 
 and again into five great racial stocks, and one of 
 these stocks, the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, is rep- 
 resented among us by ten or more subdivisions 
 vsrhich we also term races. It need not cause confu- 
 sion if we use the term " race " not only to designate 
 these grand divisions which are so far removed by 
 nature one from another as to render successful 
 amalgamation an open question, but also to desig- 
 nate those peoples or nationalities which we recog- 
 nize as distinct yet related within one of the large 
 divisions. Within the area controlled by the United 
 States are now to be foimd representatives of each 
 of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and 
 it would be a fascinating study to turn from the more 
 practical topics before us and follow the races of 
 man in their dispersion over the globe and their 
 final gathering together again under the republic of 
 America. First is the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic race, 
 which, wherever it originated, sent its Sanskrit con- 
 querors to the South to plant themselves upon a black 
 race related to the Africans and the Australians. 
 Its Western branch, many thousand miles away, 
 made the conquest and settlement of Europe. Here 
 it sent out many smaller branches, among them the 
 Greeks and Latins, whose situation on the Mediter- 
 ranean helped in great measure to develop brilliant 
 •Ripley, "The Races of Europe." 
 13 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 and conquering civilizations, and who, after twenty 
 centuries of decay and subjection, have within the 
 past twenty years begun again their westward move- 
 ment, this time to North and South America. North 
 of Greece the Aryans became the manifold Slavs, 
 that most prolific of races. One branch of the Slavs 
 has spread the power of Russia east and west, and is 
 now crushing the alien Hebrew, Finn, Lithuanian, 
 and German, and even its fellow-Slav, the Pole, who, 
 to escape their oppressors, are moving to America. 
 The Russian himself, with his vast expanse of fer- 
 tile prairie and steppe, does not migrate across the 
 water, but drives away those whom he can not or will 
 not assimilate. From Austria-Himgary, with its 
 medley of races, come other branches of the Slavs, 
 the Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Slovenians, 
 Croatians, Roumanians, Poles, and Ruthenians, some 
 of them mistakenly called Huns, but really oppressed 
 by the true Hun, the Magyar, and by the German. 
 To the west of the Slavs we find the Teutonic branches 
 of the Aryans, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and, 
 above all, the English and Scotch-Irish with their 
 descent from the Angles, Saxons, and Franks, who 
 have given to America our largest accessions in num- 
 bers, besides our language, our institutions, and forms 
 of government. Then other branches of the Aryans 
 known as Celtic, including the Irish, Scotch, and 
 Welsh, formerly driven into the hills and islands by 
 the Teutons, have in these latter days vied with the 
 English and Germans in adding to our population. 
 
 14 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 The French, a mixture of Teuton and Celt, a nation- 
 ality noted above all others for its stationary popula- 
 tion and dislike of migration, are nevertheless con- 
 tributing to our numbers by the circuitous route of 
 Canada, and are sending to us a class of people more 
 different from the present-day Frenchman in his 
 native home than the Italian or Portuguese is differ- 
 ent from the Frenchman. 
 
 In the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and the Tigris 
 the Semitic race had separated from its cousins, the 
 Aryans, and one remarkable branch of this race, 
 the Hebrews, settling on a diminutive tract of land 
 on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and finally 
 driven forth as wanderers to hve upon their wits, 
 exploited by and exploiting in turn every race of 
 Europe, have ultimately been driven forth to America 
 by the thousands from Russia and Austria where 
 nearly one-half of their present number is found. 
 
 Another race, the MongoUan, multiplying on the 
 plains of Asia, sent a conquering branch to the west, 
 scattering the Slavs and Teutons and making for 
 itself a permanent wedge in the middle of Europe, 
 whence, under the name of Magyar, the true Hun- 
 garian, the Mongolians come to America. Going 
 in another direction from this Asiatic home the Mon- 
 golian race has made the circuit of the globe, and the 
 Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans meet in America 
 their unrecognized cousins of many thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 Last of the immigrants to be mentioned, but among 
 IS 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the earliest in point of time, is the black race from 
 the slave coast of Africa. This was not a free and 
 voluntary migration of a people seeking new fields 
 to escape oppression, but a forced migration de- 
 signed to reUeve the white race of toil. All of the 
 other races mentioned, the Aryan, the Semitic, the 
 MongoUan, had in early times met one another and 
 even perhaps had sprung from the same stock, so 
 that when in America they come together there is 
 presumably a renewal of former ties. But as far 
 back as we can trace the history of races in the records 
 of archaeology or philology, we find no traces of 
 afiiliation with the black race. The separation by 
 continents, by cUmate, by color, and by institutions 
 is the most diametrical that mankind exhibits any- 
 where. It is even greater than that between the 
 Aryan and the native American, improperly called 
 the Indian, whose presence on the soil which we have 
 seized from him has furnished us with a pecuhar 
 variation in our multiform race problem. For the 
 Indian tribes, although within our acquired territory, 
 have been treated as foreign nations, and their reser- 
 vations have been saved to them under the forms of 
 treaties. Only recently has there sprung up a policy 
 of admitting them to citizenship, and therefore the 
 Indian, superior in some respects to the negro, has not 
 interfered with our experiment in democracy. 
 
 Last in point of time we have taken into our fold 
 the Malay race, with some seven million representa- 
 tives in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. Like 
 
 i6 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 the Indian and the negro, this race never in historic 
 times prior to the discovery of the new world came into 
 close contact with the white races. With its addition 
 we have completed the round of all the grand divisions 
 of the human family, and have brought together for 
 a common experiment in self-government the white, 
 yellow, black, red, and brown races of the earth. 
 
 Amalgamation and Assimilation. — Scarcely an- 
 other nation in ancient or modem history can show 
 within compact borders so varied an aggregation. 
 It is frequently maintained that a nation composed 
 of a mixed stock is superior in mind and body to one 
 of single and homogeneous stock. But it must be 
 remembered that amalgamation requires centuries. 
 The English race is probably as good an example 
 of a mixed race as can be found in modem history, 
 yet this race, though a mixture of the closely related 
 primitive Celt, the conquering Teuton, and the Latin- 
 ized Scandinavian, did not reach a common language 
 and homogeneity until three hundred years after the 
 last admixture. We know from modem researches 
 that all of the races of Europe are mixed in their 
 origin, but we also know that so much of that mixture 
 as resulted in amalgamation occurred at a time so re- 
 mote that it has been ascribed to the Stone Age.^ 
 The later inroads have either been but temporary 
 and have left but sUght impression, or they have 
 resulted in a division of territory. Thus the con- 
 quest of Britain by the Teutons and the Normans 
 > Ripley, Chs. XVII and XVIII, 
 C 17 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 has not produced amalgamation so much as it has 
 caused a segregation of the Celts in Scotland, Wales, 
 and Ireland, and of the Teutons, with their later but 
 slight infusion of Normans, in England. On the 
 continent of Europe this segregation has been even 
 more strongly marked. The present stratification 
 of races and nationalities has followed the upheavals 
 and inroads of a thousand years introduced by the 
 decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Two develop- 
 ments have taken place. A conquering race has re- 
 duced a native population in part to subjection and 
 has imposed upon the natives its laws, customs, and 
 language. In course of time the subject race becomes 
 a lower social class and slowly assimilates with the 
 upper classes, producing a homogeneous nationality 
 with a new evolution of laws, customs, and language. 
 This is the history of four great nations of Europe, 
 — the French, the German, the English, the Italian. 
 The other development has been the segregation of a 
 portion of the conquered race, who having fled their 
 conquerors avoid actual subjection by escaping to 
 the mountains and islands. Here they preserve their 
 original purity of stock and language. This is the 
 history of Austria-Hungary, whose earlier population 
 of Slavs has been scattered right and left by German 
 and Him and who now constitute separate branches 
 and dialects of the unassimilated races. That 
 Austria-Hungary with its dozen languages should be 
 able to hold together as a " dual empire " for many 
 years is one of the marvels of history, and is fre- 
 
 i8 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 quently ascribed to that which is the essence of autoc- 
 racy, the personal hold of the emperor. 
 
 The little bundle of republics known as Switzer- 
 land is a federation of French, Germans, and Italians, 
 who retain their languages and have developed what 
 out of such a conflict of races has elsewhere never 
 been developed, a high grade of democratic govern- 
 ment. Here in historic times there has been no 
 amalgamation of races or assimilation of languages, 
 but there has been the distinct advantage of a se- 
 cluded freedom from surrounding feudal lords, which 
 naturally led to a loose federation of independent 
 cantons. It is Switzerland's mountains and not her 
 mixed races that have promoted her democracy. 
 At the other end of the world the highest develop- 
 ment of democracy is in the colonies of Australasia, 
 where a homogeneous race, protected from foreign 
 foes, and prohibiting the immigration of ahen races 
 and inferior classes, has worked out self-government 
 in poUtics and industry. In the Roman Empire we 
 see the opposite extreme. At first a limited republic, 
 the extension of conquests, and the incorporation 
 of alien races led to that centralization of power in 
 the hands of one man which transformed the republic 
 into the empire. The British Empire, which to-day 
 covers all races of the earth, is growingly democratic 
 as regards Englishmen, but despotic as regards sub- 
 ject races. Taking the empire as a whole, neither 
 amalgamation nor self-government is within the 
 possibilities of its constitutional growth. 
 
 19 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 In America, on the other hand, we have attempted 
 to unite all races in one commonwealth and one elec- 
 tive government. We have, indeed, a most notable 
 advantage compared with other countries where race 
 divisions have undermined democracy. A single 
 language became dominant from the time of the 
 earliest permanent settlement, and all subsequent 
 races and languages must adopt the established 
 medium. This is essential, for it is not physical 
 amalgamation that unites mankind; it is mental 
 community. To be great a nation need not be of one 
 blood, it must be of one mind. Racial inequality 
 and inferiority are fundamental only to the extent 
 that they prevent mental and moral assimilation. 
 If we think together, we can act together, and the 
 organ of common thought and action is common lan- 
 guage. Through the prism of this noble instrument 
 of the human mind all other instruments focus their 
 powers of assimilation upon the new generations 
 as they come forth from the disunited immigrants. 
 The public schools, the newspapers, the books, the 
 political parties, the trade unions, the religious propa- 
 gandists with their manifold agencies of universal 
 education, the railroads with their inducements to 
 our unparalleled mobility of population, are all de- 
 pendent upon our common language for their high 
 efficiency. Herein are we fortunate in our plans for 
 the Americanization of all races within our borders. 
 We are not content to let the fate of our institutions 
 wait upon the slow and doubtful processes of blood 
 
 ao 
 
RACE AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 amalgamation, but are eager to direct our energies 
 toward the more rapid movements of mental assimi- 
 lation. Race and heredity may be beyond our or- 
 ganized control; but the instrument of a common lan- 
 guage is at hand for conscious improvement through 
 education and social environment. 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 Doubtless the most fascinating topic in the study 
 of races is that of the great men whom each race has 
 produced. The personal interest surrounding those 
 who have gained eminence carries us back over each 
 step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, 
 and their ancestry.' Pride of race adds its zest, 
 and each race has its eulogists who claim every great 
 man whose family tree reveals even a single ancestor, 
 male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race. 
 Here is a " conflict of jurisdiction," and the student 
 who is without race prejudice begins to look for 
 causes other than race origin to which should be 
 ascribed the emergence of greatness. 
 
 Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge ^ attempted, some years 
 ago, to assign to the different races in America the 
 14,243 men eminent enough to find a place in " Ap- 
 pleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography." 
 He prepared a statistical summary as follows: — 
 
 ' See the interesting series of articles by H. N. Casson, Mun- 
 sey's, 1906. 
 
 ' Lodge, p. 138. 
 
 22 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 EMINENT AMERICANS 
 
 English 10,376 
 
 Scotch-Irish i>439 
 
 German 659 
 
 Huguenot 589 
 
 Scotch 436 
 
 Dutch 336 
 
 Welsh 159 
 
 Irish 109 
 
 French 85 
 
 Scandinavian 31 
 
 Spanish 7 
 
 Italian 7 
 
 Swiss 5 
 
 Greek 3 
 
 Russian i 
 
 Polish I 
 
 Total 14)243 
 
 When we inquire into the methods necessarily 
 adopted in preparing a statistical table of this kind 
 we discover serious limitations. Mr. Lodge was 
 confined to the paternal Une alone, but if, as some 
 biologists assert, the female is the conservative ele- 
 ment which holds to the type, and the male is the 
 variable element which departs from the type, then 
 the specific contribution of the race factor would 
 be found in the maternal line. However, let this 
 dubious point pass. We find that in American life 
 two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not 
 in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity 
 of race. True, the New England and Virginia stock 
 has remained during most of this time of purely Eng- 
 lish origin, but the very fact that in Mr. Lodge's 
 tables Massachusetts has produced 26§6 notables, 
 
 23 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 while Virginia, of the same blood, has produced 
 only 1038, must lead to the suspicion that factors 
 other than . race extraction are the mainspring of 
 greatness. 
 
 It must be remembered that ability is not identical 
 with eminence. Ability Js the product of ancestry and 
 training. Eminence is an accident of social condi- 
 tions. The English race was the main contributor 
 to population during the seventeenth century, and 
 English conquest determined the form of govern- 
 ment, the language, and the opportunities for indi- 
 vidual advancement. During the succeeding century 
 the Scotch-Irish and. the Germans migrated in nearly 
 equal numbers, and their combined migration was 
 perhaps as great as that of the English in the seven- 
 teenth century. But they were compelled to move 
 to the interior, to become frontiersmen, to earn their 
 living directly from the soil, and to leave to their 
 English-sprung predecessors the more prominent 
 occupations of politics, Uterature, law, commerce, 
 and the army. The Germans, who, according to 
 Lodge, " produced fewer men of ability than any other 
 race in the United States," were further handicapped 
 by their language and isolation, which continue to 
 this day in the counties of Pennsylvania where they 
 originally settled. On the other hand, the Hugue- 
 nots and the Dutch came in the first century of col- 
 onization. They rapidly merged with the English, 
 lost their language, and hence contributed their full 
 share of eminence. Finally, the Irish, Scandinavian 
 
 24 
 

COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of 
 notables, did not migrate in numbers until the mid- 
 dle of the nineteenth century, and, in addition to the 
 restraints of language and poverty, they found the 
 roads to prominence preoccupied. 
 
 Besides the accident of precedence in time, a sec- 
 ond factor distinct from race itself has contributed 
 to the eminence of one race over another. The Hu- 
 guenots and the French, according to Lodge's 
 statistics, show a percentage of ability in proportion 
 to their total immigration much higher than that of 
 any other race. But the Huguenots were a select 
 class of people, manufacturers and merchants, per- 
 haps the most intelligent and enterprising of French- 
 men in the seventeenth century. Furthermore the 
 direct migration from France to this country has 
 never included many peasants and wage-earners, 
 but has been limited to the adventurous and edu- 
 cated. Had the French-Canadians who represent 
 the peasantry of France been included in these com- 
 parisons, the proportion of French eminence would 
 have been materially reduced. 
 
 The same is true of the English. Although sprung 
 from one race, those who came to America represented 
 at least two grades of society as widely apart as two 
 races. The Pilgrims and Purit.ans-of-N-ew_England _ 
 were the yeomen^ the merch ants, the m anufacturers, 
 skilled in indusT:^,'"often independent- in resources, 
 and well trained in the intellectual controversies 
 of religion and politics. The Southern planters also 
 
 — 25 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 sprang from a class of similar standing, though not 
 so strongly addicted to intellectual pursuits. Beneath 
 both these classes were the indentured servants, a 
 few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their 
 passage by service. But the majority of them were 
 brought to this country through the advertisements 
 of shipowners and landholders or even forcibly cap- 
 tured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes 
 and pauperism. Though all of these classes were of 
 the same race, they were about as widely divergent 
 as races themselves in point of native ability and pre- 
 paratory training. 
 
 The third and most important cause of eminence, 
 apart from ancestry, is the industrial and legal en- 
 vironment. An agricultural community produces 
 very few eminent men compared with the niunber 
 produced where manufactures and commerce vie 
 with agriculture to attract the youth. A state of 
 "^ j widely diversified industrial interests is likely to cre- 
 / ate widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. 
 Complicated problems of industry and poUtics stimu- 
 late the mind and reflect their influence in literature, 
 art, education, science, and the learned professions. 
 Most of all, equal opportunity for all classes and large 
 prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to 
 stimulate individuals of native ability to their highest 
 endeavor. It was the deadening effects of slavery, 
 creating inequahties among the whites themselves, 
 that smothered the genius of the Southerner whether 
 '\ Englishman, Huguenot, or Scotch-Irish, and it was 
 ^- — 26 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 the free institutions of the North that in\dted their 
 genius to unfold and blossom. 
 
 These considerations lead us to look with distrust 
 on the claims of those who find in race ancestry 
 or in race intermixture the reasons for such eminence 
 as Americans have attained. While the race factor 
 is decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive 
 races, yet, in considering those Europeans races 
 which have joined in our civilization, the important 
 questions are : From what social classes is immigra- 
 tion drawn? and, Do our social institutions offer 
 free opportunity and high incentive to the youth of 
 ability? In so far as we get a choice selection of im- 
 migrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope 
 for their native gifts, so far do they render to our 
 country the services of genius, talent, and industry. 
 
 Incentives to Immigration. — It is the distinctive 
 fact regarding colonial migration that it was Teu- 
 tonic in blood and Protestant in religion. The 
 English, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and even the 
 Scotch-Irish, who constituted practically the entire 
 migration, were less than two thousand years ago 
 one Germanic race in the forests surrounding the 
 North Sea. The Protestant Reformation, sixteen 
 centuries later, began among those peoples and 
 found in them its sturdiest supporters. The doc- 
 trines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to 
 the strong individualism of the Germanic races, pre- 
 pared the hearts of men for the doctrines of poUti- 
 cal liberty and constitutional government of the 
 
 27 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 succeeding century. The Reformation banished 
 the idea that men must seek salvation through the 
 intercession of priests and popes, who, however 
 sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea 
 that each soul has direct access to God. With the 
 Bible as a guide and his own conscience as a judge, 
 each man was accountable only to one divine sov- 
 ereign. 
 
 From the standpoint of the age this doctrine was 
 too radical. It tended to break up existing society 
 into sects and factions, and to precipitate those pvil 
 and religious wars which ended in a CathoUc or aris- 
 tocratic reaction. When this reaction came, the 
 nimierous Protestant sects of the extremer types 
 found themselves the objects of persecution, and 
 nothing remained but to seek a new land where the 
 heavy hand of repression could not reach them. 
 Thus America became the home of numberless reli- 
 gious sects and denominations of these several races. 
 From England came Congregationalists (the " Pil- 
 grims"), Puritans, Quakers, Baptists; from Scot- 
 land and Ireland came Presbyterians; from Ger- 
 many came Quakers, Dunkards, Pietists, Ridge 
 Hermits, Salzburgers, and Moravians. 
 
 It is not to be inferred that religious persecution 
 alone in the early colonial period caused emigration. 
 In point of numbers commercial enterprise was prob- 
 ably equally influential. In Holland all religious 
 sects were welcomed with a liberality far in advance 
 of any other nation, and at the same time the Dutch 
 
 28 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 people were the most advanced in the modem pursuits 
 of trade and commerce. The Dutch settlement of 
 New Amsterdam was therefore a business enterprise, 
 and neither before nor after the conquest by the Brit- 
 ish was there any religious obstacle to the reception of 
 other races and religions. In this respect New York 
 differed widely from New England, where religious 
 exclusiveness preserved the EngUsh race as a pecuhar 
 people until the middle of the nineteenth century. 
 So diverse were the races in New York, and so liberal 
 were the opportimities open to all, that Governor 
 Horatio Seymour was able to say that nine men 
 prominent in its early history represented the same 
 munber of nationalities. Schuyler was of Dutch 
 descent, Herkimer of German, Jay of French, Living- 
 ston of Scotch, Clinton of Irish, Morris of Welsh, 
 Hoffman of Swedish, while Hamilton was a West India 
 Englishman and Baron Steuben a Prussian.' 
 
 Another colony to which all races and religions 
 were welcomed was Pennsylvania. Williani Penn 
 established this colony both as a refuge for the per- 
 secuted Quakers of England and as a real estate ven- 
 ture. He was the first American to advertise his 
 dominions widely throughout Europe, offering to 
 sell one hundred acres of land at two English pounds 
 and a low rental. His advertisements combined 
 hiunanity and business, for they called attention to 
 popular government and universal suffrage; equal 
 
 • "History and Topography of New York," Address at Cornell 
 University, June 30, 1870. 
 
 29 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 rights to all regardless of race or religious belief; 
 trial by jury; murder and treason the only capital 
 crimes, and reformation, not retaliation, the object of 
 punishment for other offences. Thus Pennsylvania, 
 although settled a half century later than the Southern 
 and Northern colonies, soon exceeded them in popu- 
 lation. Penn sent his agents to Germany and per- 
 suaded large numbers of German Quakers and Pie- 
 tists to cast their lot in his plantation, so that in twenty 
 years the Germans numbered nearly one-half the 
 population. Again, in the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, wlien Louis XIV overran the Palatinate and 
 thousands of Germans fled to England, the English 
 government encouraged their migration to America. 
 In one year four thousand of them, the largest single 
 emigration of the colonial period, embarked for 
 New York, but their treatment was so iUiberal that 
 they moved to Pennsylvania, and thenceforth the 
 German migration sought the latter colony. These 
 people settled atGermantown, near Philadelphia, and 
 occupied the coimties of Bucks and Montgomery, 
 where they continue to this day with their peculiar 
 language, the " Pennsylvania Dutch." Not only 
 William Penn himself, but other landowners in 
 Pennsylvania and also the shipowners advertised 
 the country in Germany, and thousands of the poorer 
 sort of Germans were induced to indenture them- 
 selves to the settlers to whom they were auctioned 
 off by the ship captains in payment for transportation. 
 Probably one-half of all the immigrants of the colonial 
 30 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 period came under this system of postpaid transporta- 
 tion, just as at the present time nearly two-thirds come 
 on prepaid tickets. It was in Pennsylvania that the 
 largest portion of the Scotch-Irish settled, and before 
 the time of the Revolution that colony had become 
 the most populous and most diversified of all the 
 colonies. It was the only colony, except Maryland, 
 that tolerated Roman Cathohcs, and with all phases 
 of the Christian reUgion and all branches of the Teu- 
 tonic and Celtic races, Pennsylvania set the original 
 type to which all of America has conformed, that 
 of race intermixture on the basis of religious and 
 political equality. 
 
 Thf^ F'-^^T^-^rifilT — J* has long been recognized 
 that among the most virile and aggressive people 
 who came to America in colonial times, and who 
 have contributed a peculiar share to the American 
 character, are the Scotch-Irish. Their descendants 
 boast of their ancestry and cite long lists of notables 
 as their coderivatives. Yet until recent years it has 
 been the misfortune of the Scotch-Irish to have es- 
 caped historical investigation; for American history 
 has been written chiefly in New England, whose 
 colonial Puritans forbade them in their midst. In 
 fact, from the earliest settlement, the Scotch-Irish 
 have been pioneers and men of action. They have 
 contributed to America few writers and artists, but 
 many generals, politicians, and captains of industry. 
 In literature they claim two eminent names, Irving 
 and Poe; but in the army, navy, politics, and busi- 
 
 31 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 ness they claim John Paul Jones, Perry, Andrew 
 Jackson, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. 
 Grant, Stonewall Jackson, George B. McClellan, 
 Alexander Hamilton, John C. Calhoun, James G. 
 Blaine, Jefferson Davis, Thomas Benton, Hendricks, 
 John G. Carlifle, Mark Hanna, William McKinley, 
 Matthew S. Quay, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rocke- 
 feller, Horace Greeley, Henry Watterson, and hun- 
 dreds alike famous in the more strenuous movements 
 of American life. 
 
 A paradoxical fact regarding the Scotch-Irish is 
 that they are very little Scotch and much less Irish. 
 That is to say, they do not belong mainly to the so- 
 called Celtic race, but they are the most composite 
 of all the people of the British Isles. They are called 
 Scots because they Uved in Scotia, and they are called 
 Irish because they moved to Ireland. Geography 
 nd not ethnology has given them their name. They 
 are a mixed race through whose veins run the Celtic 
 blood of the primitive Scot and Pict, the primitive 
 Briton, the primitive Irish, but with a larger admix- 
 ture of the later Norwegian, Dane, Saxon, and Angle. 
 How this amalgamation came about we may learn 
 from the geography of Scotland. 
 
 The Highlands of Scotland begin at the Grampian 
 Hills and the Lowlands extend south from this line 
 to the British border, and include the cities of Glas- 
 gow and Edinburgh. The Scotch-Irish came from 
 that southwestern part of the Lowlands which bulges 
 out toward Ireland north of the Solway Firth. Over 
 
 32 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 these Lowland counties, bounded by water and hills 
 on three sides, successive waves of conquest and mi- 
 gration followed. First the primitive Caledonian or 
 Pict was driven to the Highlands, which to this day 
 is the Celtic portion of Scotland. The Briton from 
 the south, pressed on by Roman and then by Teuton, 
 occupied the country. Then Irish tribes crossed over 
 and gained a permanent hold. Then the Norwegian 
 sailors came around from the north, and to this day 
 there are pure Scandinavian types on the adjacent 
 islands. Then the Saxons and Angles, driven by the 
 Danes and Normans, gained a foothold from the east, 
 and lastly the Danes themselves added their contin- 
 gent. Here in this Lowland pocket of territory, 
 no larger than a good-sized American county, was 
 compounded for five hundred years this remarkable 
 amalgam of races. 
 
 A thousand years later, after they had become 
 a imited people and had shown their metal in the 
 trying times of the Reformation, they furnished the 
 emigrants who displaced the Irish in the north of 
 Ireland. James I, whom Scotland gave to England, 
 determined to transform Cathohc Ireland into 
 Protestant England, and thereupon confiscated the 
 lands of the native chiefs in Ulster and bestowed 
 them upon Scottish and English lords on condition 
 that they settle the territory with tenants from Scot- 
 land and England. This was the " great settlement " 
 of 1610, and from that time to the present Ulster 
 has been the Protestant stronghold of Ireland. 
 D 33 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 In 1901 the population of Ulster was 44 per cent 
 Catholic, 23 per cent Episcopahan, and 27 per cent 
 Presbyterian, an ecclesiastical division corresponding 
 almost exactly to the racial division of Irish, English, 
 and Scotch. During the whole of the seventeenth 
 century — the first century of this occupation — 
 the CathoUcs and Episcopalians were in a much 
 smaller proportion than these figures show for the 
 present time, and the relative increase in Irish and 
 Episcopalians during the eighteenth century was 
 closely connected with the migration of the Scotch 
 to America. 
 
 For one hundred years the Scotch multiplied in 
 Ulster and had no dealings with the remnants of the 
 Irish, whom they crowded into the barren hills and 
 whom they treated like savages. They retained 
 their purity of race, and although when they came 
 to America they called themselves Irish and were 
 known as Irish wherever they settled, yet they had no 
 Irish blood except that which entered into their com- 
 position through the Irish migration to Scotia fifteen 
 hundred years before. 
 
 Yet, though they despised the Irish, they could not 
 escape the unhappy fate of Ireland. The first blow 
 came in 1698, nearly one hundred years after their 
 settlement. English manufacturers complained of 
 Irish competition, and the Irish Parliament, a tool 
 of the British crown, passed an act totally forbidding 
 the exportation of Irish woollens, and another act 
 forbidding the exportation of Irish wool to any coun- 
 
 34 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 try save England. Their slowly growing linen in- 
 dustry was likewise discriminated against in later 
 years. Presbyterian Ulster had been the industrial 
 centre of Ireland, and these acts nearly destroyed 
 her industry. Next Queen Anne's Parliament 
 adopted penal laws directed against Roman Catholics 
 and Presb)rterians, and the Test Act, which compelled 
 public ofiScials to take the communion of the Estab- 
 lished Church, deprived the entire Scotch population 
 of self-government. Nevertheless they were com- 
 pelled to pay tithes to support the Established 
 Church to which they were opposed. Lastly, the 
 hundred-year leases of the tenants began to run 
 out, and the landlords offered renewals to the 
 highest bidders on short leases. Here the poverty- 
 stricken Irish gained an unhappy revenge on the 
 Scotch who had displaced them of their ancestral 
 lands, for their low standard of living enabled them 
 to offer rack-rents far above what the Scotch could 
 afford. No longer did religion, race pride, or grati- 
 tude have a part in holding Ulster to Protestant 
 supremacy. The greed of absentee landlords be- 
 gan to have full sway, and in the resulting struggle 
 for livelihood, hopeless poverty was fitter to survive 
 than ambitious thrift. 
 
 The Scotch tenants, their hearts bitter against 
 England and aristocracy, now sought a country 
 where they might have free land and self-government. 
 In 1718 it is stated that 4200 of them left for America. 
 After the famine of 1740 there were 12,000 who left 
 
 35 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 annually. Altogether, in the half century just pre- 
 ceding the American Revolution, 200,000 * persons, 
 or one-third of the Protestant population of Ulster, 
 are said to have emigrated, and the majority came 
 to America. This was by far the largest contribution 
 of any race to the population of America during the 
 eighteenth century, and the injustice they suffered 
 at the hands of England made them among the most 
 determined and effective recruits to the armies that 
 won' our independence. 
 
 Before the Scotch-Irish moved to America the 
 Atlantic coast line had been well occupied. Conse- 
 quently, in order to obtain land for themselves, they 
 were forced to go to the interior and to become fron- 
 tiersmen. They foimd in Massachusetts a state 
 church to which they must conform in order to be 
 admitted to citizenship. But what they had left 
 Ireland to escape they would not consent in a new 
 country to do. The Puritans were willing that they 
 should occupy the frontier as a buffer against the 
 Indians, and so they took up lands in New Hamp- 
 shire, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Maine. 
 Only a few congregations, however, settled in New 
 England — the bulk of the immigrants entered by 
 way of Philadelphia and Baltimore and went to the 
 interior of Pennsylvania surrounding and south of 
 Harrisburg. They spread through the Shenandoah 
 
 ' These figures are probably exaggerated, but authorities agree 
 upon the magnitude of the migration. Fiske, "Old Virginia," 
 Vol. II, p. S94. 
 
 36 
 
irJ^ 
 
 
 z 
 
 o 
 
 h-l 
 •J 
 O 
 
 u 
 
 a 
 n 
 
 3$ 
 
 » 
 
 z 
 
 O 
 
 S 
 
 o 
 
 < 
 
 6 
 
 o 
 z 
 < 
 
 =?*■■ r's'Sa^ 
 
COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS 
 
 valley and in the foothill regions of Virginia and North 
 and South CaroUna. Gradually, they pushed farther 
 west, across the mountains into Western Pennsyl- 
 vania about Pittsburg, and into Ohio, Kentucky, and 
 Tennessee. In all of these regions they fought the 
 Indians, protected the older inhabitants from inroads, 
 and developed those pioneer qualities which for one 
 hundred years have characterized the " wiiming of 
 the West." 
 
 The Scotch-Irish occupied a peculiar place in the 
 new world. More than any other race they served 
 as the amalgam to produce, out of divergent races, 
 a new race, the American. The Puritans of New 
 England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Cavaliers 
 of Virginia, were as radically different as peoples of 
 different races, and they were separated from each 
 other in their own exclusive communities. The 
 Germans were localized in Pennsylvania and Mary- 
 land, the Dutch in New York, but the Scotch-Irish 
 " alone of the various races in America were present 
 in sufficient numbers in all of the colonies to make 
 their influence coimt; and they alone of all the races 
 had one uniform religion; had experienced together 
 the persecutions by state and church which had de- 
 prived them at home of their civil and religious liber- 
 ties; and were the common heirs to those principles 
 of freedom and democracy which had been developed 
 in Scotland as nowhere else. At the time of the 
 American Revolution there were ... in all above 
 five hundred settlements scattered over practically 
 
 37 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 all the American colonies." * Trained as they were 
 in the representative democracy of the Scottish kirk, 
 thrown on their own resources in the wilderness, min- 
 gling with the pioneers of many other races, they 
 took the lead in developing that Western type which 
 in politics and industry became ultimately the Amer- 
 ican type ; yet they retained their original character, 
 and the American to-day is more at home in Glasgow 
 than in London. 
 
 •Hanna, "The Scotch-Irish," Vol. II, p. a. 
 
 38 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NEGRO 
 
 Although the negro races of Africa extend across 
 the continent and from the Sudan to Cape Colony, 
 yet the races which yielded the largest supply of 
 slaves for America were confined to a narrow stretch 
 of the Atlantic coast near the equator. For nearly 
 two thousand miles from Cape Verde the coast of 
 Africa runs southeast and easterly, and then for 
 another thousand miles it runs to the south, forming 
 the Gulf of Guinea, and from a belt of land along 
 this coast practically all the negro immigrants to 
 America have come. Here several large rivers, 
 the Senegal, the Gambia, the Niger, and the Congo- 
 furnished harbors for slave ships and routes for slave 
 traders from the interior. Two circumstances, the 
 climate and the luxuriant vegetation, render this re- 
 gion hostile to continuous exertion. The torrid heat 
 and the excessive humidity weaken the will and exter- 
 minate those who are too strenuous; but this same 
 heat and humidity, with the fertile soil, produce im- 
 paralleled crops of bananas, yams, and grains. Thus 
 nature conspires to produce a race indolent, improvi- 
 dent, and contented. Seventy-five per cent of the 
 deaths are said to be executions for supposed witch- 
 
 39 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 craft, which has Idlled more men and women than 
 the slave trade. Formerly cannibalism prevailed, but 
 it has now been largely stamped out by European 
 governments. The native governments are tribal, 
 and the chiefs sustain themselves by their physical 
 prowess and the help of priests and medicine men. 
 Property is mainly in women and slaves, and inheri- 
 tance is through the female, except among the nobihty 
 of Dahomey, where primogeniture rules. Written 
 laws and records are unknown. The people are un- 
 stable, indifferent to suffering, and " easily aroused 
 to ferocity by the sight of blood or under great fear." 
 They exhibit aversion to silence and soUtude, love of 
 rhythm, excitabiUty, and lack of reserve. All trav- 
 ellers speak of their impulsiveness, strong sexual 
 passion, and lack of will power.' 
 
 Such, in brief, were the land and the people that 
 furnished one-sixth of our total population and two- 
 fifths of our Southern population. In shifting such 
 a people from the torrid climate of equatorial Africa 
 to the temperate regions of America, and from an 
 environment of savagery to one of civilization, changes 
 more momentous than those of any other migration 
 have occurred. First, it was only the strongest 
 physical specimens who survived the horrible tests 
 of the slave catcher and the slave ship. Slavery, 
 too, as a system, could use to best advantage those 
 who were docile and hardy, and not those who were 
 independent and feeble. Just as in the many thou- 
 
 ' Tillinghast, " The Negro in Africa and America." 
 40 
 
tHE NEGRO 
 
 sand years of man's domestication of animals, the 
 breechy cow and the balky horse have been ahnost 
 eliminated by artificial selection, so slavery tended to 
 transform the savage by eliminating those who were 
 self-willed, ambitious, and possessed of individual 
 initiative. Other races of immigrants, by contact 
 with our institutions, have been civilized — the negro 
 has been only domesticated. Democratic civiliza- 
 tion offers an outlet for those who are morally and 
 intellectually vigorous enough to break away from 
 the stolid mass of their fellows; domestication dreads 
 and suppresses them as dangerous rebels. The 
 very qualities of intelUgence and manliness which are 
 essential for citizenship in a democracy were sys- 
 tematically expunged from the negro race through 
 two hundred years of slavery. And then, by the cata- 
 clysm of a war in which it took no part, this race, 
 after many thousand years of savagery and two cen- 
 turies of slavery, was suddenly let loose into the lib- 
 erty of citizenship and the electoral suffrage. The 
 world never before had seen such a triumph of dog- 
 matism and partizanship. It was dogmatism, be- 
 cause a theory of abstract equality and inalienable 
 rights of man took the place of education and the 
 slow evolution of moral character. It was partisan- 
 ship, because a political party, taking advantage of 
 its triimiph in civil war, sought to perpetuate itself 
 through the votes of its helpless beneficiaries. No 
 wonder that this fateful alhance of doctrinaires and 
 partizans brought fateful results, and that, after a 
 
 41 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 generation of anarchy and race hatred, the more fun- 
 damental task of education has only just begun. 
 
 True, there was a secondary object in view in grant- 
 ing the freedmen suffrage. The thirteenth amend- 
 ment, adopted in 1865, legalized and extended the 
 proclamation of emancipation, which had been a 
 war measure. But this was followed by servile 
 and penal laws in all the Southern states that looked 
 like peonage in place of slavery.' Congress then sub- 
 mitted the fourteenth amendment, which was adopted 
 in 1867, creating a new grade of citizenship — citizen- 
 ship of the nation — and prohibiting any state 
 from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or prop- 
 erty without the due process of law" and from deny- 
 ing to any person "the equal protection of the laws." 
 But this was not enough. The next step was the 
 fifteenth amendment adopted in 1869, prohibiting 
 any state from denying the suffrage to citizens of the 
 United States "on account of race, color, or previous 
 condition of servitude." Thus equality before the 
 law was to be protected by equaHty in making the 
 law. This object was a worthy one, and it added 
 the appearance of logical necessity to the theories 
 of doctrinaires and the schemes of partisans. But it 
 failed because based on a wrong theory of the ballot. 
 Suffrage means self-government. Self-government 
 means intelligence, self-control, and capacity for coop- 
 eration. If these are lacking, the ballot only makes 
 way for the "boss," the corruptionist, or the oli- 
 
 > Burgess, pp. 4s, 225 ; Fleming, pp. 380, 433. 
 42 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 garchy. The suffrage must be earned, not merely con- 
 ferred, if it is to be an instrument of self-protection. 
 
 But it is the peculiar fate of race problems that 
 they carry contestants to bitter extremes and afford 
 no field for constructive compromise. Could the 
 nation have adopted Lincoln's project of a himdred 
 years, or even thirty years, of gradual emancipation, 
 it might have avoided both the evils of war and the 
 fallacies of self-government. But the spirit of race 
 aggrandisement that precipitated the one rendered 
 the other inevitable. With the negro suddenly made 
 free by conquest, each fatal step in reconstruction 
 was forced by the one that preceded. The North, 
 the South, and the negro were placed in an impos- 
 sible situation, and a nation which dreaded negro 
 suffrage in 1868 ' adopted it in 1869. 
 
 For eight years the government of the Southern 
 states was in the hands of the negroes. The result 
 of turning the states over to ignorant and untried 
 voters was an enormous increase of debt without 
 corresponding pubhc improvements or public enter- 
 prises. Even the negro governments themselves 
 began to repudiate these debts and they were almost 
 wholly repudiated by the whites after returning to 
 power. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell upon the methods by 
 
 which the white voters regained and kept control of 
 
 the states. Admittedly it was through intimidation, 
 
 murder, ballot-box "stuffing," and false covinting. 
 
 ' Burgess, p. 207. 
 
 43 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 The negro vote has almost disappeared, and in more 
 recent years that which was accomplished through 
 violence is perpetuated through law. Mississippi, 
 Louisiana, South CaroUna, North Carolina, Alabama, 
 and Virginia have adopted so-called "educational" 
 tests with such adroit exceptions that white illiterates 
 may vote, but negroes, whether literate or illiterate, 
 may be excluded from voting. As stated by a promi- 
 nent white Virginian, " the negro can vote if he has 
 $300, or if he is a veteran of the Federal or Confed- 
 erate armies, or if he is a profound constitutional 
 lawyer." The fifteenth amendment, by decisions of 
 the United States Supreme Court, has been rendered 
 inoperative, and the fourteenth amendment, without 
 helping the negro, for whom it was designed,^ has 
 raised up government by private corporations which 
 never had been thought of as needing an amend- 
 ment. With these decisions it may be taken for 
 granted that the negro will not again in the near 
 future enjoy the privilege of a free ballot. 
 
 This is a situation in which the North is as deeply 
 interested as the South. The South, during the 
 period of slavery, through the privilege of counting 
 three-fifths of the slaves, enjoyed a predominance in 
 Congress and in presidential elections beyond its 
 proportion of white voters. The South now enjoys 
 a greater privilege because it counts all the negroes. 
 The fourteenth amendment expressly provides for a 
 situation like this. It says : — 
 
 > See Ch. VIII, " Politics." 
 44 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 "When the right to vote at any election for the 
 choice of electors for president and vice-president 
 of the Uiiited States, representatives in Congress, 
 the executive and judicial ofi&cers of a state, or the 
 members of the legislature thereof, is denied to 
 any of the male inhabitants of such state, being 
 twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United 
 States, or in any way abridged, except for participa- 
 tion in rebellion or other crime, the basis of represen- 
 tation shall be reduced in the proportion which the 
 nvimber of such male citizens shall bear to the whole 
 number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in 
 such state." 
 
 Whether it will be possible under our form of gov- 
 ernment to carry out this provision of the fourteenth 
 amendment may be doubted, but that it is fast becom- 
 ing a question of live interest is certain. The edu- 
 cational test is a rational test, but it is rational 
 only when the state makes an honest and diligent 
 effort to equip every man to pass the test. The for- 
 mer slave states spend $2.21 per child for educating 
 the negroes, and $4.92 per child for educating the 
 whites.' The great lesson already learned is that we 
 must "begin over again" the preparation of the 
 negro for citizenship. This time the work will begin 
 at the bottom by educating the negro, for the ballot, 
 instead of beginning at the top by giving him the 
 ballot before he knows what it should do for him. 
 What shall be the nature of this education? 
 
 ■ Commission of Education Report, 1900-1901, Vol. I, p. d. 
 45 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Education and Self-help. — We have argued that 
 democracy must be based upon intelligence, manli- 
 ness, and cooperation. How can these qyaUties be 
 produced in a race just emerged from slavery? 
 
 Intelligence is more than books and letters — it 
 is knowledge of the forces of nature and ingenu- 
 ity enough to use them for human service. The 
 negro is generally acknowledged to be lacking in 
 "the mechanical idea." In Africa he hardly knows 
 the simplest mechanical principles. In America the 
 brightest of the negroes were trained during slavery 
 by their masters in the handicrafts, such as carpentry, 
 shoemaking, spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, tail- 
 oring, and so on. A plantation became a self-sup- 
 porting unit under the oversight and discipline of the 
 whites. But the work of the negro artisans was 
 careless and inefficient. The negro blacksmith 
 fastened shoes to the plantation mule, but the horses 
 were taken to the white blacksmith in town. Since 
 emancipation the young generation has not learned 
 the mechanical trades to the same extent as the slave 
 generations. Moreover, as machinery supplants 
 tools and factories supplant handicrafts, the negro 
 is left still farther behind. "White men," says a 
 negro speaker,' "are bringing science and art into 
 menial occupations and lifting them beyond our 
 reach. In my boyhood the walls and ceilings were 
 whitewashed each spring by colored men; now this 
 
 ' Hugh M. Browne, A.M.E., Zion Church Quarterly, April, 
 1894, quoted by Tillinghast, p. 186. 
 46 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 is done by a white man managing a steam carpet- 
 cleaning works. Then the laundry work was done 
 by negroes; now they are with diflBculty able to 
 manage the new labor-saving machinery." Even in 
 the non-mechanical occupations the negro is losing 
 where he once had a monopoly. In Chicago "there 
 is now scarcely a negro barber in the business district. 
 Nearly all the janitor work in the large buildings has 
 been taken away from them by the Swedes. White 
 men and women as waiters have supplanted colored 
 men in nearly all the first-class hotels and restaurants. 
 Practically all of the shoe polishing is now done by 
 Greeks.'" 
 
 Individual negroes have made great progress, but 
 what we need to know is whether the masses of the 
 negroes have advanced. The investigators of Atlanta 
 University, in summarizing the reports of three hun- 
 dred and forty-four employers of negroes, conclude: 
 " There are a large number of negro mechanics all 
 over the land, but especially in the South. Some of 
 these are progressive, efi&cient workmen. More are 
 careless, slovenly, and ill-trained. There are signs 
 of lethargy among these artisans, and work is slipping 
 from them in some places; in others they are awaken- 
 ing and seizing the opportunities of the new industrial 
 South." =* 
 
 The prejudice of white workmen has undoubtedly 
 played a part in excluding the negro from mechanical 
 
 ' Fannie B. Williams, Charities, October 7, 1905, p. 43. 
 ' Atlanta University Publications, No. 7, p. 188. 
 
 47 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 trades, but the testimony of large employers, who have 
 no race prejudice where profits can be made, also 
 shows that low-priced negro labor often costs more 
 than high-priced white labor. The iron and steel 
 mills of Alabama have no advantage in labor cost 
 over mills of Pennsylvania and Ohio. 
 
 The foundation of intelligence for the modem work- 
 ingman is his imderstanding of mechanics. Not 
 until he learns through manual and technical training 
 to handle the forces of nature can the workingman 
 rise to positions of responsibihty and independence. 
 This is as important in agricultural labor, to which 
 the negro is largely restricted, as in manufactures. 
 Intelligence in mechanics leads to intelligence in 
 economics and politics, and the higher wages of me- 
 chanical intelligence furnish the resources by which 
 the workman can demand and secure his political 
 and economic rights. 
 
 The second requisite of democracy is independence 
 and manliness. These are moral qualities based on 
 will power and steadfastness in pursuit of a worthy 
 object. But these qualities are not produced merely 
 by exhortation and religious revivals. They have 
 a more prosaic and secular foundation. History 
 shows that no class or nation has risen to indepen- 
 dence without first accumulating property. How- 
 ever much we disparage the qualities of greed and 
 selfishness which the rush for wealth has made ob- 
 noxious, we must acknowledge that the solid basis of 
 the virtues is thrift. The improvidence of the negro 
 
 48 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 is notorious. His neglect of his horse, his mule, his 
 machinery, his eagerness to spend his earnings on 
 finery, his reckless purchase of watermelons, chickens, 
 and garden stuff, when he might easily grow them on 
 his own patch of ground, — these and many other 
 incidents of improvidence explain the constant de- 
 pendence of the negro upon his employer and his 
 creditor. There are, of course, notable exceptions 
 where negroes have accumulated property through 
 diligent attention and careful oversight.* These are 
 all the more notable when it is remembered that the 
 education of the negro has directed his energies to 
 the honors of the learned professions rather than to 
 the commonplace virtues of ownership, and that one 
 great practical experiment in thrift — the Freed- 
 man's Bank — went down through dishonesty and 
 incapacity. With the more recent development of 
 the remarkable institutions of Hampton and Tuske- 
 gee and their emphasis on manual training and prop- 
 erty accumulation, it is to be expected that these basic 
 quaKties of inteUigence and independence will re- 
 ceive practical and direct encouragement. 
 
 Cooperation is the third and capital eqxiipment for 
 attaining the rights of citizenship. There are two 
 forms of cooperation — a lower and a higher. The 
 lower is that of the chief or the boss who marshals 
 his ignorant followers through fear or spoils. The 
 higher is that of self-government where those who 
 join together do so through their own intelligence and 
 ' Bureau of Labor, Bulletin, No. 35. 
 E 49 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 mutual confidence. In the lower form there are 
 personal jealousies and factional contests which pre- 
 vent united action imder elected leaders. Negro 
 bosses and foremen are more despotic than white 
 bosses. The Colored Farmers' Alliance depended 
 upon a white man for leadership. The white 
 "carpet-baggers" organized the negro vote in the 
 reconstruction period. The negro was in this low 
 stage of cooperation because he was jealous or dis- 
 trustful of his fellow-negro and could rally together 
 only imder the banner of a leader whom he could not 
 depose. With the growth of intelligence and moral 
 character there comes a deepening sense of the need 
 of organization as well as leaders of their own race 
 whom they can trust. The most hopeful indication 
 of progress for the negroes is the large number of 
 voluntary religious, beneficial, and insurance societies 
 whose membership is limited to those of their own 
 color.* 
 
 Liberty has always come through organization. 
 The free cities of Europe were simply the guilds of 
 peasants and merchants who organized to protect 
 themselves against the feudal lords and bishops. 
 Latterly they gained a voice in parliaments as the 
 "third estate" and established our modem repre- 
 sentative democracy. The modem trade imions have 
 become a power far in excess of their numbers through 
 the capacity of the workman to organize. With the 
 modest beginnings of self-organization among ne- 
 • Atlanta University Publications, Nos. 3 and 8. 
 SO 
 
Counties having a Larger Proportion of Negroes in igcm 
 THAN IN 1880 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 groes the way is opening for their more effective 
 participation in the higher opportunities of our civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The negro trade unionist has not as yet shown the 
 organizing capacity of other races. Only among the 
 mine workers, the longshoremen, and bricklayers are 
 they to be found in considerable numbers, although 
 the carpenters have negro organizers. But in most of 
 these cases the negro is being organized by the white 
 man not so much for his own protection as for the 
 protection of the white workman. If the negro is 
 brought to the position of refusing to work for lower 
 wages than the white man he has taken the most difi6- 
 cult step in organization ; for the labor union requires, 
 more than any other economic or business association 
 in modem life, reliance upon the steadfastness of one's 
 fellows. Unfortunately, when the negro demands 
 the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority 
 leads the employer to take white men in his place, 
 and here again we see how fundamental is manual 
 and technical intelligence as a basis for other prog- 
 ress.' 
 
 It must not be inferred because we have em- 
 phasized these quaUties of intelligence — manliness 
 and cooperation as preparatory to political rights — 
 that the negro race should be deprived of the suffrage 
 until such time as its members acquire these qualities. 
 Many individuals have already acquired them. To 
 exclude such individuals from the suffrage is to shut 
 * Atlanta University Publications, No. 3, pp. 153-178, 
 SI 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the door of hope to all. An honest educational test 
 honestly enforced on both whites and blacks is the 
 simplest rough-and-ready method for measuring the 
 progress of individuals in these quaUties of citizen- 
 ship. There is no problem before the American 
 people more vital to democratic institutions than 
 that of keeping the suffrage open to the negro and 
 at the same time preparing the negro to profit by the 
 suffrage. 
 
 Neither should the negro be excluded from the 
 higher education. Leadership is just as necessary 
 in a democracy as in a tribe. Self-government is not 
 suppression of leaders but cooperation with them. 
 The true leader is one who knows his followers be- 
 cause he has suffered with them, but who can point 
 the way out and inspire them with confidence. He 
 feels what they feel, but can state what they cannot 
 express. He is their spokesman, defender, and or- 
 ganizer. Not a social class nor a struggling race 
 can reach equality with other classes and races until 
 its leaders can meet theirs on equal terms. It cannot 
 depend on others, but must raise up leaders from its 
 own ranks. This is the problem of higher educa- 
 tion — not that scholastic education that ends in 
 itself, but that broad education that equips for higher 
 usefulness. If those individuals who are competent 
 to become lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, 
 organizers, guides, innovators, experimenters, are 
 prevented from getting the right education, then 
 there is little hope for progress among the race as 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 a whole, in the intelligence, manliness, and coopera- 
 tion needed for self-government. 
 
 Growth of Negro Population. — After the census 
 of 1880 it was confidently asserted that the negro 
 population was increasing more rapidly than the 
 white population. But these assertions, since the 
 census of 1890, have disappeared. It then became 
 apparent that the supposed increase from 1870 to 
 1880 was based on a defective count in 1870, the 
 first census after emancipation. In reaUty the 
 negro element, including mulattoes, during the one 
 hundred and ten years of census taking, has steadily 
 declined in proportion to the white element. Al- 
 though negroes in absolute numbers have increased 
 from 757,000 in 1790 to 4,442,000 in i860, and 
 8,834,000 in 1900, yet in 1790 they were one-fifth of 
 the total population; in i860 they were one-seventh 
 and in 1900 only one-ninth. 
 
 It is naturally suggested that this relative decrease 
 in negro population has been owing to the large 
 immigration of whites, but the inference is unwar- 
 ranted. In the Southern states the foreign element 
 has increased less rapidly than the native white 
 element, yet it is in the Southern states that the negro 
 is most clearly falling behind. In the twenty years 
 from 1880 to 1900 the whites in eighteen Southern 
 states without the aid of foreign immigration increased 
 57 per cent and the negroes only 33 per cent.* In 
 only six Southern states. West Virginia, Florida, 
 ' Twelfth Census, Sufphmentary Analysis p. 203. 
 S3 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, 
 have the negroes, during the past ten years, increased 
 more rapidly than the whites, and in only three of 
 these states, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, 
 was the relative increase significant. In but two 
 states. South Carolina andMississippi, does the negro 
 element predominate, and in another state, Louisiana, 
 a majority were negroes in 1890, but a majority 
 were whites in 1900. "At the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century the Southern negroes were in- 
 creasing much faster than the Southern whites. At 
 the end of it they were increasing only about three- 
 fifths as fast." * 
 
 This redistribution of negroes is an interesting and 
 significant fact regarding the race and has a bearing 
 on its future. Two movements are taking place, 
 first to the fertile bottom lands of the Southern 
 states, second to the cities, both North and South. 
 Mr. Carl Kelsey has shown this movement to the 
 lowlands in an interesting way.' He has prepared 
 a geological map of Alabama, which with Mississippi 
 has received the largest accession of negroes, and has 
 shown the density of negro population according to 
 the character of the soil. In this map it appears 
 that the prairie and valley regions contain a pro- 
 portion of 50 per cent to 90 per cent negroes, while 
 the sand hill and pine levels contain only 10 per cent 
 
 ' Waicox, " Census Statistics of the Negro," Yale Review, 
 13 : 279 (1904). 
 
 ' " The Negro Farmer," p. 90. 
 
 54 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 to 50 per cent, and the piedmont or foothill region 
 less than 10 per cent. A similar segregation is 
 found in other Southern states, especially the alluvial 
 districts of Mississippi and Arkansas. In these 
 fertile sections toward which the negroes gravitate, 
 the crops are enormous, and Mr. Kelsey points out 
 a curious misconception in the census summary, 
 wherein the inference is drawn that negroes are 
 better farmers than whites because they raise larger 
 crops. "No wonder the negroes' crops are larger," 
 when the whites farm the hill country and the negroes 
 till the delta, which "will raise twice as much cotton 
 per acre as the hills." Furthermore the negro, 
 whether tenant or owner, is under the close super- 
 vision of a white landlord or creditor, who in self- 
 protection keeps control of him, whereas the white 
 farmer is left to succeed or fail without expert guid- 
 ance. 
 
 The migration of negroes to the cities is extremely 
 significant. In ten Southern states the proportion of 
 the colored population was almost exactly the same 
 in 1890 as it had been in i860, — namely, 36 per 
 cent, — yet in sixteen cities of those states, as shown 
 by Mr. Hoffman,* the colored proportion increased 
 from 19 per cent in i860 to 29 per cent in 1890. 
 This relative increase, however, did not continue 
 after 1890, for, according to the census of 1900, the 
 proportion of negroes in those cities was still 29 per 
 cent. During the past decade the negroes have 
 » Pp. 9, 10. 
 SS 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 increased relatively faster in Northern cities. The 
 white population of Chicago increased threefold from 
 1880 to 1900, and the colored population fivefold. 
 The white population of Philadelphia during the 
 same period increased 50 per cent and the colored 
 population 100 per cent. In the thirty-eight largest 
 cities of the country the negro population in ten 
 years increased 38 per cent and the white population, 
 including foreign immigration, increased 33 per cent. 
 In thirty Northern and border cities during the past 
 census decade the negroes gained 167,000, and in 
 twenty Southern cities they gained 80,000.^ 
 
 The Southern whites also are moving from the 
 South, and in larger proportions than the negroes, 
 though the movement of both is small. In 1900, 
 7 per cent of the whites of Southern birth lived in the 
 North and West and only 4.3 per cent of the negroes 
 of Southern birth. But the negroes who go North go 
 to the cities, and the whites to the country. Three- 
 fifths (58 per cent) of these northbound negroes 
 moved to the larger cities and only one-fourth (26 
 per cent) of the northbound whites. * 
 
 The accompanying map, derived from the census 
 of 1900,' shows clearly both of these movements of 
 negro population. The shaded areas indicate the 
 counties where negroes formed a larger proportion 
 
 ' Dabney, Commissioner of Education, Report, 1902, Vol. I, 
 
 P- 797- 
 
 ' Twelfth Census, Supplementary Analysis, pp. 305, 307. 
 ' Supplementary Analysis, p. 204. 
 
 56 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 of the population in igoo than they did twenty years 
 earher, in 1880. Here can be seen the movement to 
 the low and fertile lands of the South and the cities 
 of the North and South. There are but two areas 
 in California and Colorado, not included on the map, 
 where the population of negroes has increased, and 
 one of these contains the city of Los Angeles. 
 
 Were the negroes in the cities to scatter through 
 all the sections, the predominating nimibers of the 
 white element might have an elevating influence, 
 but, instead, the negroes congregate in the poorer 
 wards, where both poverty and vice prevail. Hoff- 
 man has shown that two-thirds of the negroes in 
 Chicago live in three wards, which contain all the 
 houses of ill-fame in that part of the city. The same 
 is true of Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati.* 
 In these sections negro prostitution has become an 
 established institution, catering to the Italian and 
 other lower grades of immigrants, and supporting 
 in idleness many negro men as solicitors. 
 
 We have seen that the negro population has not 
 kept pace with the native white population. The 
 reason is found in the smaller excess of births over 
 deaths. Statistics of births are almost entirely 
 lacking in the United States. Statistics of deaths 
 are complete for only portions of Northern states 
 and a few Southern cities, containing, in 1900, in 
 all, 27,500,000 whites and 1,180,000 negroes. 
 Of this number, 20,500,000 whites and 1,100,000 
 'Pp. 16, 17; Wood, "American in Process," p, 218, 
 
 57 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 negroes lived in cities, so that the showing which 
 the census is able to give is mainly for cities North 
 and South and for rural sections only in the North.' 
 It appears that for every looo colored persons living 
 in these cities the deaths in 1900 were 31. i, while for 
 every 1000 white persons the deaths were only 17.9. 
 That is to say, the colored death-rate was 73 per cent 
 greater than the white death-rate. 
 
 In the rural districts there was much less difference. 
 The colored death-rate was 19. i and the white death- 
 rate 15.3, a colored excess of 25 per cent. 
 
 Morals and Environment. — In explaining the 
 excessive colored mortality there are two classes of 
 opinions. One explains it by social conditions, the 
 other by race traits. The one points to environment, 
 the other to moral character. The one is socialistic, 
 the other individualistic. These different views exist 
 among colored people themselves, and one of the 
 encouraging signs is the scientific and candid in- 
 terest in the subject taken by them under the leader- 
 ship of Atlanta University. A colored physician 
 who takes the first view states his case forcibly : * — 
 
 "Is it any wonder that we die faster than our white 
 brother when he gets the first and best attention, 
 while we are neglected on all sides ? They have the 
 best wards and treatment at the hospital, while we 
 must take it second hand or not at all; they have all 
 the homes for the poor and friendless, we have none; 
 
 • Twelfth Census, Vol. Ill, p. Ixix. 
 
 ' Atlanta University Publications, No. i, p. 44. 
 
 58 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 they have a home for fallen women, we have none; 
 they have the public Ubraries where they can get and 
 read books on hygiene and other subjects pertain- 
 ing to health, we have no such privileges; they have 
 the gymnasiums where they can go and develop 
 themselves physically, we have not; they have all 
 the parks where they and their children can go in 
 the hot siunmer days and breathe the pure, cool air, 
 but for fear we might catch a breath of that air and 
 live, they put up large signs, which read thus, 
 'For white people only ' ; they live in the best homes, 
 while we live in humble ones; they live in the 
 cleanest and healthiest parts of the city, while we live 
 in the sickliest and filthiest parts of the city; the 
 streets on which they Uve are cleaned once and twice 
 a day, the streets on which we live are not cleaned 
 once a month, and some not at all; besides, they have 
 plenty of money with which they can get any phy- 
 sician they wish, any medicine they need, and travel 
 for their health when necessary; all of these blessings 
 we are deprived of. Now, my friends, in the face 
 of all these disadvantages, do you not think we are 
 doing well to stay here as long as we do ?" 
 
 Another colored writer, less eloquent, but not less 
 accurate, in summarizing the statistics collected under 
 the guidance of Atlanta University concludes: ' — 
 
 "Overcrowding in tenements and houses occupied 
 by colored people does not exist to any great extent, 
 and is less than was supposed. 
 
 ' Atlanta University Publications, No. 2, p. 9. 
 S9 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 "In comparison with white women, an excess of 
 colored women support their families, or contribute 
 to the family support, by occupation which takes 
 them much of their time from home, to the neglect 
 of their children. 
 
 " Environment and the sanitary condition of houses 
 are not chiefly responsible for the excessive mortaUty 
 among colored people. 
 
 "Ignorance and disregard of the laws of health 
 are responsible for a large proportion of this exces- 
 sive mortality." 
 
 It is pointed out by these colored students and by 
 many others that the excessive mortahty of colored 
 people is owing to pulmonary consumption, scrof- 
 ula, and syphilis, all of which are constitutional; 
 and to infant mortality due also to constitutional 
 and congenital disease. The census of 1900 reports 
 for a portion of the Northern states that for every 
 1000 white children under five years of age there 
 were 49.7 deaths in one year, and for every 1000 
 colored children under five years there were 118.5 
 deaths, an excess of negro infant mortality of 137 
 per cent.' The census also reports that negro deaths 
 in cities owing to consumption are proportionately 
 2.8 times as many as white deaths,^ deaths owing to 
 pneumonia are 89 per cent greater,* while deaths 
 owing to contagious causes, such as measles, scarlet 
 fever, diphtheria,* are but slightly greater or actually 
 
 • Twelfth Census, Vol. Ill, p. Ixxxii. ' P. clxxvi. 
 ' P.. ccxviii. * Pp. cjiix, cxxiii, cxxvii. 
 60 
 
THE NEGRO 
 
 less than the white deaths in proportion to population. 
 In the city of Charleston, where mortaUty statistics 
 of negroes were compiled before the war, it has been 
 shown that from 1822 to 1848 the colored death- 
 rate from consumption was a trifle less than the 
 white, but since 1865 the white mortality from that 
 cause has decreased 38 per cent, while the negro 
 mortality has increased 70 per cent.^ The death- 
 rates from consumption in Charleston in 1900 were 
 189.8 for 100,000 whites and 647.7 ^^^ 100,000 
 negroes, an excess of 241 per cent. The lowest 
 negro death-rate reported from consumption in 
 cities is 378.5 for Memphis, but in that city the 
 white death-rate from the same cause is 169.9, a 
 negro excess of 123 per cent.^ 
 
 At a conference held at Atlanta University, Pro- 
 fessor Harris, of Fisk University, concluded : ' — 
 
 " I have now covered the ground to which our 
 excessive death-rate is mainly due ; namely, pulmon- 
 ary diseases, especially consumption and pneumonia, 
 scrofula, venereal diseases, and infant mortality. If 
 we eliminate these diseases, our excessive death-rate 
 will be a thing of the past. . . . While I do not 
 depreciate sanitary regulations and a knowledge of 
 hygienic laws, I am convinced that a sine qua non 
 of a change fpr the better in the negro's physical 
 condition is a higher social morality. . . . From 
 
 ' Hoffman, p. 70. 
 
 ' Twelfth Census, Supplementary Analysis, pp. 496, 497. 
 ' Atlanta University Publications, No. i, p. 26. 
 61 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the health reports of all our large Southern cities we 
 learn that a considerable amount of our infant mor- 
 tality is due to inanition, infantile debility, and in- 
 fantile marasmus. Now what is the case in regard 
 to these diseases? The fact is that they are not 
 diseases at all, but merely the names of symptoms 
 due to enfeebled constitutions and congenital 
 diseases, inherited from parents suffering from the 
 effects of sexual immorality and debauchery. . . . 
 It is true that much of the moral laxity which exists 
 among us to-day arose out of slavery. . . . But to 
 explain it is not to excuse it. It is no longer our 
 misfortune as it was before the war; it is our sin, 
 the wages of which is our excessive number of 
 deaths. . . . The presence of tubercular and scrofu- 
 lous diseases, consumption, syphiHs, and leprosy, 
 has caused the weaker nations of the earth to 
 succumb before the rising tide of Christian civiliza- 
 tion. . . . The history of nations teaches us that 
 neither war, nor famine, nor pestilence, exterminates 
 them so completely as do sexual vices." 
 
 63 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 It is only since the year 1820 that the government 
 of the United States has kept a record of alien pas- 
 sengers arriving in this country. For several years 
 following 1820 the immigration was so slight as to be 
 almost negUgible. It was not until 1820 that there 
 were more than 20,000 arrivals. So accustomed 
 have we become to large figures of immigration that 
 nothing less than 100,000 seems worth noting, and 
 this figure was not reached until 1842. Since then 
 there have been only four years of less than 100,000, 
 and two of these were years of the Civil War. 
 
 A striking fact which first attracts the attention 
 of one who examines the statistics since 1840 is the 
 close sympathy between immigration and the in- 
 dustrial prosperity and depression of this country. 
 Indeed, so close is the connection that many who 
 comment on the matter have held that immigration 
 during the past century has been strictly an indus- 
 trial or economic phenomenon, depending on the 
 opportunities in this country, and that the religious 
 and political causes which stimulated earlier im- 
 migration no longer hold good. 
 
 A curved line on the accompanying chart has been 
 63 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 drawn so as to show the relative numbers of immi- 
 grants since 1800, and another line shows the move- 
 ment of imports of merchandise per capita of the 
 population. The latter, except for tariff changes, 
 is a fair index of the cycles of prosperity and de- 
 pression. By following these two Knes on the chart 
 we notice the coincidence is close, except for a few 
 years prior to the Civil War. Both movements 
 reached high points in 1873, and fell to very low 
 points in 1879; then rose in 1882 and fell in 1885; 
 then reached another high point in 1892 and a low 
 point in 1897; and finally, the present period of 
 prosperity and heavy imports brings the largest 
 immigration in the history of the coimtry. 
 
 In following the history of immigration by races 
 we shall see to what extent the alleged coincidence 
 between prosperity and immigration may be counted 
 as a social law. Probably in the middle of the cen- 
 tury it was not so much the opportunities for em- 
 ployment in this country as it was conditions in 
 Europe that drove people to our shores. When we 
 come to inquire as to the nationahties which con- 
 stituted immigration at that period, we shall find 
 what these causes were. In 1846 occurred the un- 
 paralleled potato rot in Ireland, when the year's 
 crop of what had become the sole food staple of the 
 peasantry of that island was entirely lost. The 
 peasants had been reduced to subsistence on the 
 cheapest of all staples through the operations of a 
 system of landlordism scarcely ever paralleled on a 
 
 64 
 
Immigrants 
 
 1,100,000 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 800,000 
 
 400.000 
 
 400,000 
 
 100.000 
 
 iMMlQAjkNT^ PCit 10.000 
 
 POPUl-ATrc 
 
 WITS Pen 10.000 POPULATIOH - 
 
 ■A^ 
 
 f 
 
 ^ 
 
 v:V 
 
 VL*,nb leoo 16^5 idib j&is IB40 1645 leso 16&5 leeo] 
 
 Movement of Immigrants, Imports of Merchandise per! 
 
1695 IBOO 
 
 AND IMMIGRANTS PER lO.OOO POPULATION— 1800 TO 1906. 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 large scale as a means of exploiting tenants. It 
 was found that land used for potatoes would sup- 
 port three times the number of people as the same 
 land sown to wheat, and the small tenants or the 
 cotter peasants paid the landlord a higher rent than 
 could be obtained from larger cultivators. Reduced 
 to a diet of potatoes by an economic system imposed 
 by an aUen race, the Irish people are one of the 
 many examples which we find throughout our 
 studies of a subject people driven to emigration by 
 the economic injustices of a dominant race. We 
 shall find the same at a later time in Austria-Hun- 
 gary, whence the conquered Slav peoples are fleeing 
 from the discrimination and impositions of the ruling 
 Magyar. We shall find it in Russia, whence the Jew, 
 the Finn, and the German are escaping from the 
 oppression of the Slav; and we shall find it in Tur- 
 key, whence the Armenian and the Syrian flee from 
 the exactions of the Turk. Just so was it in Ireland 
 in the latter half of the decade, 1840 to 1850, and 
 the contention of the apologist for England that the 
 famine which drove the Irish across the seas was an 
 act of God, is but a weak effort to charge to a higher 
 power the sufferings of a heartless system devised 
 to convert the utmost Ufe and energy of a subject 
 race into gold for their exploiters. Much more 
 nearly true of the part played by the Divine hand in 
 this catastrophe is the report of the Society of Friends 
 in Ireland, saying that the mysterious dispensation 
 with which their country had been visited was "a 
 F 65 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 means permitted by an All-wise Providence to ex- 
 hibit more strikingly the unsound state of its social 
 condition." 
 
 Thus we have an explanation of the incentives 
 under which, even in a period of industrial depres- 
 sion in this country, the unfortunate Irish flocked 
 hither. It is true that the population of Ireland had 
 increased during the century preceding the famine 
 at a rate more rapid than that of any other country 
 of Europe. It was 3,000,000 in 1790, and over 
 8,000,000 in the year of the famine. At the present 
 time it is only 5,000,000. The potato, above all 
 other crops, enables the cultivator to live from 
 hand to mouth, and coupled with a landlord system 
 which takes away all above mere subsistence, this 
 "de-moralizing esculent" aided the apparent over- 
 population. Certainly the dependence of an entire 
 people on a single crop was a most precarious 
 condition. 
 
 During the five years, 1846 to 1850, more than a 
 million and a quarter of Irish emigrants left the ports 
 of the United Kingdom, and during the ten years, 
 1845 to 1855, more than a million and a quarter 
 came to the United States. So great a number 
 could not have found means of transportation had it 
 not been for the enormous contributions of govern- 
 ment and private societies for assistance. Here 
 began that exportation of paupers on a large scale 
 against which our country has protested and finally 
 legislated. Even this enormous migration was not 
 
 66 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 greatly in excess of the number that actually perished 
 from starvation or from the diseases incident thereto. 
 The Irish migration since that time has never reached 
 so high a point, although it made a second great 
 advance in 1882, succeeding another famine, and it 
 has now fallen far below that of eastern races of 
 Europe. Altogether the total Irish immigration of 
 over four milhon since 182 1 places that race second 
 of the contributors to our foreign-born population, 
 and, compared with its own numbers, it leads the 
 world, for in sixty years it has sent to us half as 
 many people as it contained at the time of its greatest 
 population. Scarcely another country has sent 
 more than one-fifth. 
 
 Looking over a period of nearly three centuries, 
 it is probably true that the Germans have crossed the 
 ocean in larger numbers than any other race. We 
 have already noted the large migration during the 
 eighteenth century, and the ofi5cial records show 
 that since 1820 there have entered our ports more 
 than 5,200,000 Germans, while Ireland was sending 
 4,000,000 and Great Britain 3,300,000. 
 
 The German migration of the nineteenth century 
 was quite distinct in character from that of the pre- 
 ceding century. The colonial migration was largely 
 induced on religious grounds, but that of the past 
 century was political and economic, with at first a 
 notable prominence of materialism respecting re- 
 ligion. From the time of the Napoleonic wars to 
 the revolution of 1848, the governments of Germany 
 67 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 were despotic in character, supporting an established 
 church, while at the same time the marvellous growth 
 of the universities produced a class of educated 
 liberals. In the revolution of 1848 these took a 
 leading part, and although constitutional govern- 
 ments were then estabhshed, yet those who had been 
 prominent in the popular uprisings found their 
 position intolerable under the reactionary govern- 
 ments that followed. The political exiles sought 
 America, bringing their liberalism in politics and 
 religion, and forming with their descendants in 
 American cities an intellectual aristocracy. They 
 sprang from the middle classes of Germany, and 
 latterly, when the wars with Austria and France had 
 provoked the spirit of militarism, thousands of 
 peasants looked to emigration for escape from mili- 
 tary service. The severe industrial depression of 
 1873-79 added a powerful contributing cause. 
 Thus there were two periods when German migra- 
 tion culminated; first in 1854, on political groimds, 
 second in 1882, on military and economic grounds. 
 Since the latter date a significant decline has ensued, 
 and the present migration of 32,000 from Germany 
 is mainly the remnants of families seeking here 
 their relatives. A larger number of German im- 
 migrants, 5S,ooo, comes from Austria-Hungary and 
 Russia, those from the latter country being driven 
 from the Baltic provinces and the Volga settlements 
 by the "Russianizing" policy of the Slav. 
 The Changmg Character of European Immigra- 
 68 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 tion. — Besides the Germans and the Irish, the races 
 which contributed the largest numbers of immi- 
 grants during the middle years of the nineteenth 
 century were the English and Scandinavian. After 
 the decline during the depression of 1879 there was 
 an increase of all those races in 1882, a year when 
 nearly 800,000 immigrants arrived. At about that 
 time began a remarkable change in the character of 
 immigration destined to produce profoimd conse- 
 quences. 
 
 This change was the rapid shifting of the sources 
 of immigration from Western to Eastern and South- 
 em Europe. A line drawn across the continent of 
 Europe from northeast to southwest, separating the 
 Scandinavian Peninsula, the British Isles, Germany, 
 and France from Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, 
 and Turkey, separates countries not only of distinct 
 races but also of distinct civilizations. It separates 
 Protestant Europe from Cathohc Europe ; it separates 
 countries of representative institutions and popular 
 government from absolute monarchies; it separates 
 lands where education is universal from lands where 
 illiteracy predominates; it separates manufacturing 
 countries, progressive agriculture, and skilled labor 
 from primitive hand industries, backward agricul- 
 ture, and unskilled labor; it separates an educated, 
 thrifty peasantry from a peasantry scarcely a single 
 generation removed from serfdom; it separates 
 Teutonic races from Latin, Slav, Semitic, and Mon- 
 golian races. When the sources of American im- 
 
 69 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 migration are shifted from the Western countries 
 so nearly allied to our own, to Eastern countries so 
 remote in the main attributes of Western civilization, 
 the change is one that should challenge the attention 
 of every citizen. Such a change has occurred, and 
 it needs only a comparison of the statistics of im- 
 migration for the year 1882 with those of 1902 and 
 1906 to see its extent. While the total number of 
 immigrants from Europe and Asiatic Turkey was 
 approximately equal in 1882 and 1902, as shown 
 in the accompanying table, yet in 1882 Western 
 Europe furnished 87 per cent of the immigrants and 
 in 1902 only 22 per cent, while the share of South- 
 eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey increased from 
 13 per cent in 1882 to 78 per cent in 1902. During 
 twenty years the immigration of the Western races 
 most nearly related to those which have fashioned 
 American institutions declined more than 75 per 
 cent, while the immigrants of Eastern and Southern 
 races, untrained in self-government, increased nearly 
 sixfold. For the year 1906 the proportions remain 
 the same, although in the four years the total im- 
 migration had increased two-thirds. 
 
 Italians. — It was at this period that ItaHan im- 
 migration first became noticeable. Prior to 1880 
 this stream had been but the merest trickle, which 
 now has become the greatest of all the foreign 
 tributaries to our population. In 1873 the Italians 
 for the first time reached 8000 in number, but they 
 fell to 3000 in 1876 and so continued in moderate 
 
 70 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 IMMIGRATION FROM EUROPE AND ASIATIC TUR- 
 KEY BY COUNTRIES, 1882, 1902, 1906 
 
 
 1882 
 
 xgo3 
 
 190S 
 
 
 Number 
 
 Per 
 
 CENT 
 
 Number 
 
 Per 
 
 CENT 
 
 Number 
 
 Per 
 
 CENT 
 
 Total Europe and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Asiatic Turkey 
 
 647,082 
 
 100 
 
 622,987 
 
 100 
 
 1,024,719 
 
 100 
 
 Great Britain and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ireland 
 
 179.423 
 
 27.7 
 
 46,036 
 
 7-4 
 
 102,241 
 
 lO.O 
 
 Belgium 
 
 1,431 
 
 .2 
 
 2,577 
 
 •4 
 
 5,099 
 
 .5 
 
 Denmark 
 
 Ii,6r8 
 
 1.8 
 
 5,660 
 
 •9 
 
 7,741 
 
 .8 
 
 France 
 
 6,003 
 
 •9 
 
 5,117 
 
 .8 
 
 9,386 
 
 ■9 
 
 Germany 
 
 250,630 
 
 38.7 
 
 26,304 
 
 4.2 
 
 37,564 
 
 3-7 
 
 Netherlands 
 
 9>5i7 
 
 I.I 
 
 2,284 
 
 •4 
 
 4,946 
 
 ■5 
 
 Norway 
 
 29,101 
 
 4-5 
 
 17,404 
 
 2.8 
 
 21,730 
 
 2.1 
 
 Sweden 
 
 64,607 
 
 lO.O 
 
 30,894 
 
 S-o 
 
 23,310 
 
 2-3 
 
 Switzerland 
 
 10,884 
 
 1-7 
 
 2,344 
 
 •4 
 
 3,846 
 
 ■4 
 
 Total Western Eu- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 rope 
 
 563,174 
 
 87.0 
 
 136,620 
 
 22.0 
 
 215,863 
 
 21.7 
 
 Italy 
 
 32,159 
 
 5-0 
 
 178,37s 
 
 28.6 
 
 273,120 
 
 26.7 
 
 Portugal 
 
 42 
 
 
 S,3°7 
 
 ■9 
 
 8,517 
 
 .8 
 
 Spain 
 
 37« 
 
 
 975 
 
 .1 
 
 1,921 
 
 .1 
 
 Austria-Hungary 
 
 29,15° 
 
 4.5 
 
 171,989 
 
 27.6 
 
 265,138 
 
 25-9 
 
 Russia 
 
 21,590 
 
 ^•3 
 
 107,347 
 
 17.2 
 
 215,665 
 
 21.0 
 
 Greece 
 
 '73 
 
 8,104 
 
 1-3 
 
 19,489 
 
 1.9 
 
 Roumania 
 
 '77 
 
 
 7,196 
 
 1.2 
 
 4,476 
 
 •5 
 
 Servia, Bulgaria, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and Montenegro 
 
 
 2 
 
 851 
 
 3 
 
 4,666 
 
 ■S 
 
 Turkey in Europe 
 
 '86 
 
 
 187 
 
 
 9,510 
 
 •9 
 
 Turkey in Asia 
 
 82 
 
 
 6,223 
 
 I.O 
 
 6,354 
 
 .6 
 
 Total Southern 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and Eastern Eu- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 rope and Asiatic 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Turkey 
 
 83,637 
 
 13.0 
 
 486,367 
 
 78.0 
 
 808,856 
 
 78.9 
 
 ' Figures for 1883. 
 
 ' Less than one-tenth of one per cent. 
 
 71 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 proportions, but suddenly in 1880 jumped to 12,000, 
 and in 1882 to 32,000. Falling off again with the 
 industrial depression to 13,000 in 1885, they reached 
 76,000 in 1 89 1, and then with another depression to 
 3S,ooo in 1895 they have now gone forward by 
 leaps to the high mark of 287,000/ The Italians 
 seem destined to rival the Germans and Irish as the 
 leading contributors to our social amalgam. Of 
 course only a small part are as yet women and 
 children, but this is because the immigration is in 
 its early and pioneer stages. The women and chil- 
 dren follow rapidly when the men have saved enough 
 money to send for them. One-fourth of the emigra- 
 tion is on tickets and money furnished by friends 
 and relatives in the United States.^ 
 
 The immigrants from Italy differ from those from 
 Austria, Russia, Hungary, and Ireland, in that they 
 are not driven forth by the oppressions of a dominant 
 race, but as a result of the economic and political 
 conditions of a united people. This does not in- 
 deed exclude oppression as a cause of expatriation, 
 but it transfers the oppression from that of one race 
 to that of one class upon another. By far the larger 
 portion of Italian immigration comes from the 
 southern provinces and from Sicily, where the power 
 of the landlords is greatest. In these provinces of 
 large estates held by the nobility, the rents have been 
 
 ' This is the number according to race ; the table gives the 
 number according to last place of residence. 
 ' Review of Reviews, 33 : 491 (1906). 
 72 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 forced to the highest notch, an orange garden paying 
 as high as $i6o per year per acre, and the leases are 
 short, so that the tenant has little to encourage im- 
 provement.' In many cases the land is rented by 
 large capitalist farmers, who raise therefrom cattle, 
 wheat, and olives, and are prosperous men. But 
 their prosperity is extracted from the miserable wages 
 of their laborers. The agricultural laborer gets 
 from 8 cents to 32 cents a day through the year and 
 10 cents to 38 cents through the summer. Unskilled 
 laborers get 25 cents to 50 cents a day, and such 
 skilled trades as masons and carpenters get only 
 27 cents to $1.40 a day. This wide range of wages 
 corresponds generally with the South and North, 
 the lowest rates being in the South and the highest 
 toward the North. In France and England wages 
 are two and one-half times higher than in Italy, 
 while in Germany they are about 30 per cent to 50 
 per cent higher. 
 
 Nor must it be supposed that the cost of living 
 is low to correspond with the low wages. This is 
 largely owing to the exaggerated system of indirect 
 taxes. Although wheat is a staple crop, yet the 
 peasants eat com in preference, because, for a given 
 expenditure, it gives a stronger sense of repletion. 
 Of wheat and com meal together the Italian peasant 
 eats in a year only three-fourths as much as the in- 
 mate of an Enghsh poorhouse. Of meat the peasant 
 
 ' Statistics mainly from King and Okey, "Italy To-day." 
 73 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 in Apulia gets no more than ten pounds a year, 
 while the English workhouse pauper gets fifty-seven 
 pounds. The local taxes ori flour, bread, and maca- 
 roni are as high as lo or 15 per cent of the value, 
 and the state tax on imported wheat is nearly 50 
 per cent of its value. The consumption of sugar 
 has decreased one-fourth since heavy duties were 
 imposed to protect native beet sugar, and it averages 
 barely over five pounds per head. The consumption 
 in the United States is sixty-five pounds per head. 
 The iniquitous salt tax raises the price of salt from 
 eleven pounds for two cents to one pound for two 
 cents, and the peasants sometimes cook their com 
 meal in sea water, although this is smuggling. What 
 the peasants lack in grain and meat they strive to 
 supply by vegetables, and the proportion of vege- 
 tables, peas, and beans consumed is greater than that 
 for any other country of Europe. The peasants 
 drink no beer, spirits, tea, nor coffee, but the average 
 annual consumption of wine is twenty gallons a head. 
 Food alone costs the peasants 85 per cent of their 
 wages, whereas it costs the German peasant 62 per 
 cent and the American workman 41 per cent. The 
 poor and working classes pay over one-half the taxes, 
 amounting, even without wine, to 10 or 20 per cent 
 of their wages. There are in the south and Sardinia 
 some 13,000 sales of land a year on distress for non- 
 payment of taxes, and the expropriated owners 
 become tenants. Several villages in Southern Italy 
 have been almost wholly abandoned and one village 
 
 74 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 has recently announced its intention of removing 
 itself entire to one of the South American republics.' 
 The rich escape taxation, which is laid largely on 
 consimiption. Besides the state tax on imports, 
 each city and town has its octroi, or import tax, on 
 everything brought into the city. These "protec- 
 tive duties rob the poor to fill the pockets of the rich 
 landlord and manufacturer." Since 1870 wealth 
 has increased 17 per cent and taxes 30 per cent. 
 Taxes are nearly one-fifth of the nation's income, 
 against one-twelfth in Germany, one-sixteenth in 
 England, and one-fifteenth in the United States. 
 Wages rose from i860 to 1885, but since 1890 they 
 have fallen. 
 
 The army and navy are the greatest drain on the 
 resources of the people. They cost one-fourth more 
 of the national income than do the armies and navies 
 of France and Germany. Eighty million dollars a 
 year for miUtary expenditures in Italy is over 5 per 
 cent of the income of the people, whereas $194,000,- 
 000 for the same purpose in the United States is 
 less than 2 per cent of our incomes. In the Triple 
 Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, the latter 
 country crushes its peasants in order to make a 
 showing by the side of its wealthier partners. The 
 army takes every able-bodied peasant from industry 
 into barracks and drills for two years of his best 
 vigor. But the long line of exposed coast and the 
 
 ' Review of Reviews, 33 : 491 (1906). 
 
 75 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 general military situation in Europe make it un- 
 likely that Italy for many years can shake off this 
 incubus. 
 
 In addition to all these economic and political 
 causes of pressure, there is another cause of a more 
 profound nature, the rapid growth of population. 
 Strange as it may seem, the very poverty of Italy 
 increases the tendency to a high birth-rate, and the 
 rate is highest in the very districts where illiteracy 
 and poverty are greatest. Only the great number of 
 deaths produced by poverty and lack of sanitation 
 prevents the increase of population from exceeding 
 that of the more rapidly growing countries of Ger- 
 many, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. It is not 
 among those classes and nations, Hke the middle 
 classes and the thrifty people of France, that the 
 largest number of children are bom, but it is among 
 those ignorant and low-standard peoples to whom 
 the future offers no better prospect for their children 
 than for themselves. Early marriages and large 
 families are both a result and a cause of poverty. 
 Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker 
 population than any other European country except 
 Belgium, which is really not a country, but a manu- 
 facturing centre of Europe. The density of popula- 
 tion in Italy is in excess of that of Germany, France, 
 India, and even China. It is exceeded only by the 
 islands of Great Britain and Japan, and the states 
 of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.' Emigration 
 '■ Twelfth Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 27. 
 76 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 is the only immediate relief from this congestion. 
 All other remedies which operate through raising 
 the intelligence and the standards of living require 
 years for appreciable results, but meanwhile the per- 
 sistent birth-rate crowds new competitors into the new 
 openings and multiplies the need of economic and 
 political reforms before they can be put into effect. 
 Emigration is a relief ready at hand, but it is not a 
 lessening of population. For many years to come 
 Italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow 
 to America.' Emigration is also a means of revenue 
 for the mother coimtry. For it is estimated that the 
 peasants in foreign coimtries send back to their 
 famihes and relatives $30,000,000 to $80,000,000 
 each year, and many of them return with what to 
 them is a fortune, and with new ideas of industry 
 and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and 
 cottage for their declining years. It is said that al- 
 ready there are several small country towns in South- 
 em Italy which have risen from squalor to something 
 of prosperity through the money and influence of 
 those who have come home. This temporary emi- 
 gration is probably over 150,000 each year going 
 abroad or to adjoining countries expecting to 
 return. 
 
 Besides this temporary emigration there is an 
 equally large permanent emigration. This is of 
 two kinds, almost as entirely distinct from each other 
 
 ' Review of Reviews, 33: 491 (1906). 
 
 77 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 as the emigration from two separate nations. The 
 North Italian is an educated, skilled artisan, coming 
 from a manufacturing section and largely from the 
 cities. He is Teutonic in blood and appearance. 
 The South Italian is an illiterate peasant from the 
 great landed estates, with wages less than one-third 
 his northern compatriot. He descends with less 
 mixture from the ancient inhabitants of Italy. Un- 
 happily for us, the North Italians do not come to 
 the United States in considerable numbers, but they 
 betake themselves to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil 
 in about the same numbers as the South Italians 
 come to us. It is estimated that in those three 
 countries there are 3,000,000 Italians in a total popu- 
 lation of 23,000,000, and they are mainly derived 
 from the north of Italy. Surrounded by the unen- 
 terprising Spanish and Portuguese, they have shown 
 themselves to be the industrial leaders of the country. 
 Some of the chief buildings, banks, flour mills, textile 
 mills, and a majority of the wheat farms of Argentina 
 belong to Italians. They are one-third of the popu- 
 lation of Buenos Ayres and own one-haK of the com- 
 mercial capital of that city. They become lawyers, 
 engineers, members of parliament, and an Italian 
 by descent has been president of the Republic of 
 Argentina, while other Italians have been ministers 
 of war and education.' While these North Italians, 
 with their enterprise, intelligence, and varied capaci- 
 
 • King and Okey, pp. 316-318. 
 78 
 
>4 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 < 
 
 g 
 
 i 
 
 Z 
 
 w 
 
 13 
 < 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 ties, go to South America, we receive the South 
 Italians, who are nearly the most illiterate of all 
 immigrants at the present time, the most subservient 
 to superiors, the lowest in their standards of living, 
 and at the same time the most industrious and thrifty 
 of all common laborers. 
 
 Austria-Hungary. — Next to that from Italy the 
 immigration from the Austro-Hungarian Empire 
 in recent decades has reached the largest dimensions. 
 While Italy sent 273,000 people in 1906, Austria- 
 Hungary sent 265,000 in that year and 276,000 the 
 year before. Like the immigration from Italy, this 
 increase has occurred since 1880. Prior to that 
 date the largest number reported from Austria-Hun- 
 gary was 9000 in 1874. 
 
 While these figures compare with those of the 
 Italians, yet, unKke the Italians, they refer to a 
 congeries of races and languages distinct one from 
 another. The significance of Austro-Hxmgarian im- 
 migration is revealed only when we analyze it by 
 races. The race map of this empire shows at once 
 the most complicated social mosaic of all modem 
 nations. Here we see, not that mixture of races 
 and assimilation of language which in our own 
 country has evolved a vigorous, united people, but a 
 juxtaposition of hostile races and a fixity of language 
 held together only by the outside pressure of Russia, 
 Germany, Italy, and Turkey. This conflict of races 
 has made the politics of the empire nearly incom- 
 prehensible to foreigners, and has aggravated the 
 
 79 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 economic inequalities which drive the unprivileged 
 masses to emigrate. 
 
 Not only are there in Austria-Hungary five grand 
 divisions of the human family, — the German, the 
 Slav, the Magyar, the Latin, and the Jew, — but these 
 are again subdivided. In the northern mountainous 
 and hilly sections are 13,000,000 Slavic peoples, the 
 Czechs, or Bohemians, with their closely related 
 Moravians, and the Slavic Slovaks, Poles, and Ruthe- 
 nians (known also as Russniaks) ; while in the southern 
 hills and along the Adriatic are another 4,000,000 
 Slavs, the Croatians, Servians, Dalmatians, and 
 Slovenians. Between these divisions on the fertile 
 plains 8,000,000 Magyars and 10,000,000 Germans 
 have thrust themselves as the dominant races. To 
 the southwest are nearly a million Italians, and in the 
 east 2,500,000 Latinized Slavs, the Roumanians. 
 The Slavs are in general the conquered peoples, with 
 a German and Magyar nobility owning their land, 
 making their laws, and managing their administra- 
 tion. The northern Slavs are subject to Austria 
 and Hungary, and the Ruthenians suffer a double 
 subjection, for they were the serfs of their fellow- 
 Slavs, the Poles, whom they continue to hate, and in 
 whose longings for a reunited Poland they do not 
 participate. The southern Slavs and Roumanians 
 are subject to Hungary. The Roumanians are a 
 widespread and disrupted nationality of Slavs, 
 conquered by the Romans, from whom they imper- 
 fectly took their language, but now distributed 
 
 80 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 partly in independent kingdoms and partly under 
 the dominion of the Magyars. The Croatians from 
 the southwest mountains are among the finest speci- 
 mens of physical manhood coming to our shores. 
 They are a vigorous people, hating Hungary which 
 owns them and calling themselves " Austrians " 
 to ward off the name "Hun," by which Americans 
 mistakenly designate them. The Magyars are the 
 Asiactic conquerors who overran Europe ten cen- 
 turies ago, and being repulsed by the Teutons to 
 the west estabhshed themselves on the Slavs in the 
 valley and plains of the Danube. Boasting a repub- 
 lican constitution a thousand years old they have 
 not until the past year been compelled to share 
 it with the people whom they subdued. Astute 
 politicians and dashing mihtary leaders, they are as 
 careless in business as the Slavs, and the supremacy 
 which they maintained in pohtics has slipped into 
 the hands of the Jews in economics. In no other 
 modem country has the Jew been so Uberally treated, 
 and in no other country have public and private 
 finance come more completely under his control. 
 Profiting by the Magyars' suppression of the Slavs, 
 the Jew has monopolized the business opportunities 
 denied to the Slovak and the Croatian, and with this 
 leverage has quietly elbowed out the Magyar himself. 
 No longer is the Magyar the dominant race, and in 
 the past year he has contributed to America more 
 immigrants than any branch of his conquered Slavs. 
 In the Austrian dominions of former Poland the Jew 
 G 8i 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 likewise has become the financier, and both the 
 Ruthenian and the Pole, unable to rise under their 
 burden of debt, contribute their more enterprising 
 peasants to America. 
 
 By a perverse system of representative govern- 
 ment, based on representation of classes both in 
 Austria and in Hungary, the great landowners and 
 wealthy merchants have heretofore elected three- 
 fourths of the parliaments, but recently in both coun- 
 tries the emperor has granted universal manhood 
 suffrage. The peasant Slavs will henceforth be on 
 equal footing with the German, the Magyar, and the 
 Jew, and whether out of the belated equaUty of 
 races there will come equality of economic oppor- 
 tunity remains to be seen. For the past few years 
 the emigration from the unfortunate dual empire 
 has amazingly increased. 
 
 With all of this confusing medley of races, with 
 this diversity of Greek and Roman Catholicism and 
 Judaism, with this history of race oppression and 
 hatred, it is not surprising that the immigrants should 
 break out into factions and feuds wherever thrown 
 together among us. It is the task of America to lift 
 them to a patriotism which hitherto in their native 
 land they could not know. 
 
 The earliest migration from Austria-Hungary was 
 that of the Bohemians, the most highly educated 
 and ardently patriotic of the Slavic people. After 
 the revolution of 1848, when the Germans suppressed 
 their patriotic uprising, students, professional men, 
 
 82 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 and well-to-do peasants came to America and settled 
 in New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, and in 
 the rural districts of Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Min- 
 nesota, and California. Again, after the Austro- 
 Prussian War of 1866, skilled laborers were added 
 to the stream, and they captured a large part of the 
 cigar-making industry of New York and the clothing 
 trade of Chicago. Latterly recruits from the peas- 
 ants and unskilled laborers sought the sections where 
 the pioneers had located, learned the same trades, or 
 joined the armies of common labor. In Chicago 
 the Bohemian section is almost a self-governing city, 
 with its own language, industries, schools, churches, 
 and newspapers. After a slight decline there is again 
 an increasing flow of immigrants, the number in 
 1906 being 13,000. Those who come bring their 
 families, and few return. In these earlier days the 
 Polish and Hungarian Jews also began their migra- 
 tion, following the steps of their German precursors. 
 In the decade of the eighties the increase of immi- 
 gration from Austria-Hungary was first that of the 
 Poles, now numbering 44,000, then the Magyars, 
 now 43,000, then the Slovaks, now 37,000. In the 
 latter part of the nineties the Southern Slavs — Croa- 
 tians and Slovenians — suddenly took up their 
 burden, and 43,000 of them came in 1906. Follow- 
 ing them came the Ruthenians from the North, num- 
 bering 16,000 in 1906. Last of all, the Latinized 
 Slavs, the Roumanians, began their flight from the 
 Magyar, to the number of less than 400 in the year 
 
 83 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 1900, but swelling to 11,000 in 1906. Only 300 ad- 
 ditional came from their own proper kingdom — 
 Roumania. During all this period there has been 
 also a considerable migration of Germans, reaching 
 35,000 in 1906. 
 
 In the face of this swollen migration the Hunga- 
 rian government has at last taken alarm. They see 
 even their own people, the Magyars, escaping. Re- 
 cently the government has attempted to restrict the 
 unrest by prohibiting advertisements or public 
 speeches advocating emigration, by prohibiting the 
 sale of tickets or solicitation by any one not holding 
 a government license for the purpose, by contracting 
 with a steamship line from their own Adriatic part 
 of Fiume in order to reduce migration across the 
 German and Italian frontiers. This may account for 
 the decline of ten thousand immigrants from Austria- 
 Hungary in 1906. 
 
 Practically the entire migration of the Slavic ele- 
 ments at the present time is that of peasants. In 
 Croatia the forests have been depleted, and thousands 
 of immigrant wood-choppers have sought the forests 
 of our South and the railway construction of the West. 
 The natural resources of Croatia are by no means in- 
 adequate, but the discriminating taxes and railway 
 freight rates imposed by Hungary have prevented 
 the development of these resources. The needed 
 railways are not obtainable for the development of 
 the mines and minerals of Croatia, and the peasants, 
 unable to find employment at home, are allured by 
 
 84 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 the advertisements of American steamships and the 
 agents of American contractors. 
 
 So it is with the Slovak peasants and mine workers 
 of the northern mountains and foothills. With 
 agricultural wages only eighteen cents a day, they 
 find employment in the American mines, rolling- 
 mills, stock-yards, and railroad construction at $1.50 
 a day. 
 
 In addition to race discrimination, the blight of 
 Austria-Hungary is landlordism. Considerable re- 
 forms, indeed, have been made in certain sections. 
 The free alienation of landed property was adopted in 
 the Austrian dominions in 1869, and in the following 
 twelve years 42,000 new holdings were carved out 
 of the existing peasant proprietorships in Bohemia. 
 Similar transfers have occurred elsewhere, but even 
 where this peasant ownership has gained, the enor- 
 mous prices are an obstacle to economic inde- 
 pendence. They compel the land-owning peasant 
 to content himself with five to twelve acres, the size 
 of four-fifths of the farms in Galicia. His eagerness 
 to own land is his dread of the mere wage-earner's 
 lot, which he no longer dreads when he lands in 
 America. "The fear of falling from the social 
 position of a peasant to that, immeasurably inferior, 
 of a day laborer, is the great spur which drives over 
 the seas alike the Slovak, the Pole, and the Ruthe- 
 nian." ' These high rentals and fabulous values 
 can exist only where wages and standards of living 
 
 • Balch, Charities, May, 1906, p. 179. 
 8S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 are at the bare subsistence level, leaving a heavy 
 surplus for capitahzation. They also exist as a 
 result of most economical and minute cultivation, so 
 that, with this training, the Bohemian or Polish 
 farmer who takes up land in America soon becomes 
 a well-to-do citizen. 
 
 Taxation, too, is unequal. For many years the 
 government suffered deficits, the military expenses 
 increased, and worst of all, the nobility were exempt 
 from taxation. The latter injustice, however, was 
 remedied by the revolution of 1848, and yet at the 
 present time the great landowners pay much less 
 than their proportionate share of the land-tax, 
 to say nothing of the heavy taxes on consumption 
 and industry. 
 
 As in other countries of low standards, the num- 
 ber of births is large in proportion to the inhabitants. 
 For every one thousand persons in Hungary, there 
 are forty-three births each year,* a number exceeded 
 by but one great country of Europe, Russia. Yet, 
 with this large number of births, because the economic 
 conditions are so onerous and the consequent deaths 
 so frequent, the net increase is less than that of any 
 other country except France. In Austria the births 
 and deaths are less and the net increase greater, 
 and they run close to those of prolific Italy. 
 
 In each of these countries the figures for births 
 and deaths stand near those of the negroes in Amer- 
 ica, and like the negroes, two-fifths of the mortality 
 'Marshall, "Principles of Economics," p. 248. 
 §6 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 is that of children under five years of age, whereas 
 with other more favored countries and races this 
 proportion is only one-fifth or one-fourth. It is not 
 so much the overpopulation of Austria-Hungary 
 that incites emigration as it is the poverty, ignorance, 
 inequality, and helplessness that produce a seeming 
 overpopulation. While these conditions pontinue, 
 emigration will continue to increase, and the efforts 
 of the Hungarian government to reduce it will not 
 succeed. 
 
 Russia. — The Russian Empire is at the present 
 time the third in the rank of contributors to American 
 immigration. Russian immigration, Hke that of 
 Italy and Austria-Hungary, is practically limited to 
 the past two decades. In 1881 it first reached 10,000. 
 In 1893 it was 42,000, and in 1906, 216,000. 
 
 The significant fact of this immigration is that it 
 is only 2 per cent Russian and 98 per cent non-Rus- 
 sian. The Russian peasant is probably the most 
 oppressed of the peasants of Europe, and though his 
 recent uprising has aroused his intellect and dis- 
 abused the former opinion of his stupidity, yet he 
 has been so tied to the soil by his system of com- 
 munism, his burden of taxes and debt and his sub- 
 jection to landlords, that he is as yet immune to the 
 fever of migration. In so far as he has moved from 
 his native soil he has done so through the efforts 
 of a despotic government to Russianize Siberia 
 and the newly conquered regions of his own vast 
 domain. On the other hand, the races which have 
 
 8r 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 abandoned the Russian Empire have been driven forth 
 because they refused to submit to the policy which 
 would by force assimilate them to the language or 
 religion of the dominant race. Even the promises of 
 the aristocracy under the fright of recent revolution 
 have not mitigated the persecutions, and the num- 
 ber taking refuge in flight has doubled in four years. 
 Foremost are the Jews, 125,000 in 1906, an increase 
 from 37,000 four years ago; next the Poles, 46,000 in 
 igo6; next 14,000 Lithuanians, 13,000 Finns, and 
 10,000 Germans. The Poles and Lithuanians are 
 Slavic peoples long since conquered and annexed by 
 the Russians. The Finns are a Teutonic people with a 
 Mongol language ; the Germans are an isolated branch 
 of that race settled far to the east on the Volga River 
 by invitation of the Czar more than one hundred years 
 ago, or on the Baltic provinces adjoining Germany; 
 while the Jews are the unhappy descendants of a race 
 whom the Russians found in territory conquered 
 during the past two centuries. 
 
 The Jews. — Russia, at present, sends us five- 
 sixths of the Jewish immigration, but the other one- 
 sixth comes from adjoining territory in Austria- 
 Hungary and Roumania. About six thousand tem- 
 porarily sojourn in England, and the Whitechapel 
 district of East London is a reduced picture of the 
 East Side, New York. During American history 
 Jews have come hither from all countries of Europe. 
 The first recorded immigration was that of Dutch 
 Jews, driven from Brazil by the Portuguese and re- 
 
 88 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 ceived by the Dutch government of New Amsterdam. 
 The descendants of these earliest immigrants continue 
 at the present time in their own peculiar congregation 
 in lower New York City. Quite a large number of 
 Portuguese and Spanish Jews, expelled from those 
 countries in the time of Columbus, have contributed 
 their descendants to America by way of Holland. 
 The German Jews began their migration in small 
 numbers during colonial times, but their greatest 
 influx followed the Napoleonic wars and reached 
 its height at the middle of the century. Prior to the 
 last two decades so predominant were the German 
 Jews that, to the ordinary American, all Jews were 
 Germans. Strangely enough, the so-called Russian 
 Jew is also a German, and in Russia among the masses 
 of people the words "German" and "Jew" also 
 mean the same thing. Hereby hangs a tale of inter- 
 est in the history of this persecuted race. Jews are 
 known to have settled at the site of the present city 
 of Frankfort in Southern Germany as early as the 
 third century, when that town was a trading post on 
 the Roman frontier. At the present time the region 
 about Frankfort, extending south through Alsace, 
 contains the major part of the German and French 
 Jews. To this centre they flocked during the Middle 
 Ages, and their toleration in this region throws an 
 interesting light on the reasons for their persecution 
 in other countries. 
 
 Under the Catholic polity following the crusades 
 the Jew had no rights, and he could therefore gain 
 
 89 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 protection only through the personal favor of em- 
 peror, king, or feudal lord. This protection was ar- 
 bitrary and capricious, but it was always based on a 
 pecuniary consideration. Unwittingly the Catholic 
 Church, by its prohibition of usury to all believers, 
 had thrown the business of money lending into the 
 hands of the Jews, and since the Jew was neither 
 inclined toward agriculture nor permitted to follow 
 that vocation, his only sources of livelihood were trade 
 and usury. The sovereigns of Europe who protected 
 the Jews did so in view of the large sums which they 
 could exact from their profits as usurers and traders. 
 They utilized the Jews like sponges to draw from 
 their subjects illicit taxes. When, therefore, the 
 people gained power over their sovereigns, and the 
 spirit of nationahty arose, the Jew, without his former 
 protector, was the object of persecution. England 
 was the first country where this spirit of nationality 
 emerged and the first to expel the Jews (1290); 
 France followed a century later (1395); and Spain 
 and Portugal two centuries later (1492 and 1495). 
 But in Germany and other parts of the Holy Roman 
 Empire political confusion and anarchy prevailed, 
 and the emperor and petty sovereigns were able 
 to continue their protection of the Jews. 
 
 The Russian people, at that time, were confined to 
 the interior surrounding Moscow, but even before the 
 crusades they had expelled the Jews. As rapidly 
 as they conquered territory to the south from Turkey, 
 or to the west from Poland, they carried fQrward the 
 
 90 
 
< 
 < 
 
 2 
 
 < 
 
 a 
 
 m 
 
 O 
 
 Z 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 same hostility. There was only one country, Poland, 
 in the centre of Europe, where the kings, desiring to 
 build up their cities, invited the Jews, and hither the 
 persecuted race fled from the East before the Rus- 
 sians, and latterly from the West, driven out by the 
 Germans. When finally, a hundred years ago, the 
 remnant of the Polish Empire was divided between 
 Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the Jewish population 
 in this favored area had become the largest aggrega- 
 tion of that people since the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 To-day in certain of these provinces belonging to 
 Russia the Jews number as high as one-sixth of the 
 entire population, and more than half of that of 
 several cities. Fifteen provinces taken from Po- 
 land and Turkey, extending 1500 miles along the 
 border of Germany and Austria-Hungary and 240 
 miles in width, constitute to-day the "Pale of Settle- 
 ment," the region where Jews are permitted to live. 
 Here are found one-third of the world's 11,000,000 
 Jews.^ Here they formerly engaged in all lines of 
 industry, including agriculture. 
 
 Now we come to the last great national uprising, 
 like that which began in England six hundred years 
 ago. The Russian serfs had been freed in 1861. 
 But they were left without land or capital and were 
 burdened by high rents and enormous taxes. The 
 Jews became their merchants, middlemen, and usu- 
 rers. Suddenly, in 188 1, the peasants, oppressed and 
 neglected by landlord and government, turned ii^ 
 
 ' "Jewish Encyclopedia," 2 : 532. 
 91 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 their helplessness upon the intermediate cause of their 
 misery, the Jew. The anti-Semitic riots of that year 
 have perhaps never been exceeded in ferocity and 
 indiscriminate destruction. Then began the migra- 
 tion to America. The next year the Russian gov- 
 ernment took up the persecution, and the notorious 
 "May Orders" of 1882 were promulgated. These, 
 at the instigation of the Greek Church, have been fol- 
 lowed by orders more stringent, so that to-day, unless 
 relieved by the terrorized promises of the Czar, the 
 Jew is not permitted to foreclose a mortgage or to 
 lease or purchase land; he cannot do business on 
 Sundays or Christian hohdays; he cannot hold office; 
 he cannot worship or assemble without police permit; 
 he must serve in the army, but cannot become an 
 officer ; he is excluded from schools and universities ; 
 he is fined for conducting manufactures and com- 
 merce ; he is almost prohibited from the learned pro- 
 fessions. While all other social questions are 
 excluded from discussion, the anti-Semitic press is 
 given free play, and the popular hatred of the Jew is 
 stirred to frenzy by " yellow " journals. Only when 
 this hatred breaks out in widespread riots does the 
 news reach America, but the persecution is constant 
 and relentless. The government and the army join 
 with the peasants, for, true to the character of this 
 versatile race, the Jews are leaders of the revolu- 
 tionary and socialistic patriots who seek to overthrow 
 the government and restore the land to the people. 
 Nor is this uprising confined to Russia. Galician 
 9» 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 Jews in the Austrian possessions of former Poland, 
 where the Slavs bitterly complain of them as saloon- 
 keepers and money-lenders,' have suffered the perse- 
 cutions of their race, and in the last ten years 
 Roumania, a country of peasants adjoining Hungary 
 and Russia, has adopted laws and regulations even 
 more oppressive than those of her neighbor. 
 
 Thus it is that this marvellous and paradoxical 
 race, the parent of philosophers, artists, reformers, 
 martyrs, and also of the shrewdest exploiters of the 
 poor and ignorant, has, in two decades, come to 
 America in far greater numbers than in the two 
 centuries preceding. 
 
 It should not be inferred that the Jews are a race 
 of pure descent. Coming as they do from all sec- 
 tions and nations of Europe, they are truly cosmo- 
 politan, and have taken on the language, customs, 
 and modes of thought of the people among whom 
 they live. More than this, in the course of centuries, 
 their physical characteristics have departed from 
 those of their Semitic cousins in the East, and they 
 have become assimilated in blood with their Euro- 
 pean neighbors. In Russia, especially in the early 
 centuries, native tribes were converted to Judaism 
 and mingled with their proselyters. That which 
 makes the Jew a peculiar people is not altogether 
 the purity of his blood, but persecution, devotion to 
 his religion, and careful training of his children. 
 Among the Jews from Eastern Europe there are 
 
 ' Balch, Charities, May, 1906, p. 180. 
 93 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 marked intellectual and moral differences. The 
 Hungarian Jew, who emigrated earliest, is adventu- 
 rous and speculative: the Southern Russian keeps 
 few of the religious observances, is the most intel- 
 lectual and socialistic, and most inclined to the Ufe 
 of a wage-earner; the Western Russian is orthodox 
 and emotional, saves money, becomes a contractor 
 and retail merchant; the Galician Jew is the poorest, 
 whose conditions at home were the harshest, and 
 he begins American life as a pedler. That which 
 unites them all as a single people is their religious 
 training and common language. 
 
 The Hebrew language is read and written by all 
 the men and half of the women, but is not spoken 
 except by a few especially orthodox Jews on Satur- 
 day. Hebrew is the language of business and cor- 
 respondence, Yiddish the language of conversation, 
 just as Latin in the Middle Ages was the official and 
 international language, while the various peoples 
 spoke each its own vernacular. The Yiddish spoken 
 by the Russian Jews in America is scarcely a lan- 
 guage — it is a jargon without syntax, conjugation, or 
 declension. Its basis is sixty per cent German of the 
 sixteenth century, showing the main origin of the 
 people, and forty per cent the language of the coun- 
 tries whence they come. 
 
 That which most of all has made the Jew a cause 
 of alarm to the peasants of Eastern Europe is the 
 highest mark of his virtue, namely, his rapid increase 
 in numbers. A high birth-rate, a low death-rate, 
 
 94 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 a long life, place the Jew as far above the average 
 as the negro is below the average. These two races 
 are the two extremes of American race vitality. Says 
 Ripley : ^ — 
 
 "Suppose two groups of one hundred infants 
 each, one Jewish, one of average American parentage 
 (Massachusetts), to be bom on the same day. In 
 spite of the disparity of social conditions in favor of 
 the latter, the chances, determined by statistical 
 means, are that one-half of the Americans will die 
 within forty-seven years; while the first half of the 
 Jews will not succumb to disease or accident before 
 the expiration of seventy-one years. The death-rate 
 is really but little over half that of the average Ameri- 
 can population." 
 
 While the negro exceeds all races in the consti- 
 tutional diseases of consumption and pneumonia, 
 the Jew excels all in immunity from these diseases. 
 His vitaUty is ascribed to his sanitary meat inspec- 
 tion, his sobriety, temperance, and self-control. 
 Of the Jew it might be said more truly than of any 
 other European people that the growth of popula- 
 tion has led to overcrowding and has induced emi- 
 gration. Yet of no people is this less true, for, were 
 it not for the discrimination and persecution directed 
 against them, the Jews would be the most prosperous 
 and least overcrowded of the races of Europe. 
 
 The Finns. — Until the year 1901 Finland was the 
 freest and best governed part of the Russian Empire. 
 
 ' P. 380. 
 95 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Wrested from Sweden in 1809, it became a grand 
 duchy of the Czar, guaranteed self-government, and 
 confirmed by coronation oath of each successor. 
 It was the only section of the Russian Empire with 
 a constitutional government in which the laws, taxes, 
 and army were controlled by a legislature represent- 
 ing the people. Here alone in all his empire was the 
 Czar compelled to ask the consent of parliament in 
 order to enact laws. But these free institutions within 
 the past seven years were by his decree abrogated. 
 The Czar claimed the right to put into force such laws 
 as he chose without discussion or acceptance by the 
 Finnish diet. The Russian language took the place 
 of Swedish and Finnish as the official medium, a 
 severe censorship of the press was introduced, the 
 Lutheran religion, devoutly adhered to, was subor- 
 dinated to the "orthodox," the independent Finnish 
 army was abolished and Finns were distributed 
 throughout the armies of the empire, and a Russian 
 governor with absolute powers was placed over all. 
 Thus have 2,000,000 of the sturdiest specimens of 
 humanity been suddenly reduced to the level of 
 Asiatic despotism. They had managed by industry 
 and thrift to extort a hvelihood from a sterile soil, 
 and had developed a school system with universal 
 education, culminating in one of the noblest universi- 
 ties of Europe. Their peasants are healthy, intelli- 
 gent, honest, and sober. In one year, 1900, their 
 emigration increased from 6000 to 12,000, and it 
 continues at 14,000, notwithstanding the repentance 
 
 96 
 
1^ 55 
 
 3. -B 
 
 ^ o 
 o 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 of the Czar and his restoration of their stolen rights. 
 Compared with the population of the country, the 
 present immigration from Finland is proportionately 
 greater than that of any race except the Jews; and 
 famine, adding its horrors to the loss of their hber- 
 ties, has served to augment the army of exiles. 
 
 Much dispute has arisen respecting the racial 
 relations of the Finns. Their language is like that of 
 the Magyars, an agglutinative tongue with tendencies 
 towards inflections, but their physical structure allies 
 them more nearly to the Teutons. Their Lutheran 
 religion also separates them from other peoples of 
 the Russian Empire. Their sober industriousness 
 and high intelligence give them a place above that 
 of their intolerant conquerers; and the futile attempts 
 of the Slav to "Russify" them drove to America 
 many of our most desirable immigrants. 
 
 The French Canadians. — When Canada was con- 
 quered by England in 1759, it contained a French 
 population of 65,000. Without further immigration 
 the number had increased in 1901 to 2,400,000, in- 
 cluding 1,600,000 in Canada and 800,000 emigrants 
 and their children in the United States. Scarcely 
 another race has multiplied as rapidly, doubling 
 every twenty-five years. The contrast with the same 
 race in France, where population is actually declin- 
 ing, is most suggestive. French Canada is, as it 
 were, a bit of mediasval France, picked out and pre- 
 served for the curious student of social evolution. 
 No French revolution broke down its old institutions, 
 H 97 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 and the English conquest changed little else than the 
 oath of allegiance. Language, customs, laws, and 
 property rights remained intact. The only state 
 church in North America is the Roman Catholic 
 Church of Quebec, with its great wealth, its control 
 of education, and its right to levy tithes and other 
 church dues. With a standard of living lower than 
 that of the Irish or Italians, and a population in- 
 creasing even more rapidly, the French from Canada 
 for a time seemed destined to displace other races in 
 the textile mills of New England. Yet they came 
 only as sojourners, intending by the work of every 
 member of the family to save enough money to re- 
 turn to Canada, purchase a farm, and live in relative 
 affluence. Their migration began at the close of the 
 Civil War, and during periods of prosperity they 
 swarmed to the mill towns, while in periods of de- 
 pression they returned to their Northern homes. 
 Gradually an increasing proportion remained in 
 "the States," and the number in 1900 was 395,000 
 bom in Canada, and 436,000 children bom on this 
 side of the line. 
 
 The Portuguese. — A diminutive but interesting 
 migration of recent years is that of the Portuguese, 
 who come, not from Portugal, but from the Cape 
 Verde and Azores Islands, near equatorial Africa. 
 These islands are remarkably overpopulated, and 
 the emigration, nearly 9000 souls in 1906, is a 
 very large proportion of the total number of in- 
 habitants. By two methods did they find their 
 
 9^ 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 way to America. One was almost accidental, for it 
 was the wreck of a Portuguese vessel on the New Eng- 
 land coast that first directed their attention to that 
 section. They have settled mainly at New Bedford, 
 Massachusetts, where they follow the fisheries in the 
 summer and enter the mills in the winter. The other 
 method was solicitation, which took several thou- 
 sand of them to Hawaii as contract laborers on the 
 sugar plantations. Unlike the Oriental importations 
 to these islands the Portuguese insisted that their 
 families be imported, and then as soon as their con- 
 tracts expired they left the planters to become small 
 fanners, and are now the backbone of the coffee indus- 
 try. They and their children are nearly half of the 
 " Caucasian " element of 30,000. In Massachusetts 
 they are of two distinct types, the whites from the 
 Azores and the blacks from the Cape Verde Islands, 
 the latter plainly a blend of Portuguese and Africans. 
 Their standards of living are similar to those of 
 the Italians, though they are distinguished by their 
 cleanliness and the neatness of their homes. 
 
 Syrians and Armenians. — That the recruiting area 
 of American immigration is extending eastward is 
 no more clearly evident than in the recent migration 
 of Syrians and Armenians. These peoples belong to 
 the Christian races of Asiatic Turkey, whence they 
 are escaping the oppressions of a government which 
 deserves the name of organized robbery rather than 
 government. Within the past thirty years many 
 thousand Syrians of Mount Lebanon have emigrated 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 to Egypt and other Mediterranean countries, to the 
 dependencies of Great Britain and South America. 
 Six thousand of them came to the United States in 
 1906. They belong mainly to the Greek Church 
 or the Maronite branch of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and it is mainly American missionary 
 effort that has diverted them to the United States. 
 Unlike other immigrants, they come principally from 
 the towns, and are traders and pedlers. Broadly 
 speaking, says an agent of the Charity Organization 
 Society of New York, "the well-intentioned efforts 
 of the missionaries have been abused by their pro- 
 t6g6s. ... It is these alleged proselytes who have 
 contributed largely to bring into relief the intrin- 
 sically servile character of the Syrian, his in- 
 gratitude and mendacity, his prostitution of all 
 ideals to the huckster level. ... As a rule they 
 affiliate themselves with some Protestant church or 
 mission, abandoning such connections when no 
 longer deemed necessary or profitable." ' 
 
 The Armenian migration began with the monstrous 
 Kurdish atrocities of recent years, instigated and 
 supported by the Turkish government. Armenians 
 are a primitive branch of the Christian religion, and 
 at an early date became separated from both the 
 Greek and Roman churches. They are among the 
 shrewdest of merchants, traders, and money-lenders 
 of the Orient, and, like the Jews, are hated by the 
 peasantry and persecuted by the government. Like 
 
 ' "Industrial Commission," 15 1442. 
 100 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 the Jews also, religious persecution has united them 
 to the number of five million in a racial type of re- 
 markable purity and distinctness from the surround- 
 ing races. 
 
 Asiatic Immigration. — Utterly distinct from all 
 other immigrants in the nineteenth century are the 
 Chinese. Coming from a civilization already ancient 
 when Europe was barbarian, the Chinaman com- 
 placently refuses to assimilate with Americans, 
 and the latter reciprocate by denying him the right 
 of citizenship. His residence is temporary, he comes 
 without his family, and he accumulates what to him 
 is a fortune for his declining years in China. The 
 gold discoveries of Cahfomia first attracted him, and 
 the largest migration was 40,000 in 1882, the year 
 when Congress prohibited further incoming. In 
 1906, 3015 Chinamen tried to get in, and 2732 were 
 admitted, mainly as United States citizens, return- 
 ing merchants and returning laborers. One-half of 
 the 1448 admitted as "exempt" were beheved by the 
 immigration officials to have been coolies in disguise.' 
 Within the past ten years the Japanese have taken 
 his place, and 14,000 of his Mongohan cousins arrived 
 in 1906. 
 
 The immigration of the Japanese has taken a 
 peculiar turn owing to the annexation of Hawaii. 
 While these islands were yet a kingdom in 1868 this 
 immigration began, and in 1886 a treaty was con- 
 cluded with Japan for the immigration of Japanese 
 
 ' Commissioner-General, 1906, p. 85. 
 lOI 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 contract laborers for the benefit of the sugar planters. 
 Many thousand were imported under this arrange- 
 ment, and "the fear that the islands would be an- 
 nexed to Japan was one of the prime factors in the 
 demand for annexation to the United States."' 
 With annexation in 1900 contract labor was abolished, 
 and the Japanese, freed from servitude, indulged in 
 "an epidemic of strikes." The Japanese govern- 
 ment retained paternal oversight of its laborers 
 migrating to foreign lands, which is done through 
 some thirty-four emigrant companies chartered by 
 the government. Since opening up Korea for 
 settlement Japan has granted but a limited number 
 of passports to its citizens destined for the mainland 
 of America, so that almost the entire immigration 
 comes first to Honolulu through arrangements made 
 between the emigrant companies and the planters. 
 But the planters are not able to keep them on the 
 island on account of the higher wages on the Pacific 
 coast. Since the alien contract-labor law does not 
 apply to immigrants from Hawaii, a padroni system 
 has sprung up for importing Japanese from that 
 island. As a result, the arrivals at Honolulu are 
 equalled by the departures to the mainland, and 
 Hawaii becomes the American side entrance for the 
 Japanese.^ This evasion has been stopped by the 
 law of February 20, 1906. 
 
 ' Coman, " History of Contract Labor," etc., p. 47. 
 ' Reports on Hawaii ; Commissioner-General of Immigration. 
 See Index. 
 
 102 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 Hawaii also is showing another Asiatic race the 
 opening to America. The growing independence of 
 the Japanese led the planters to seek Koreans, since 
 the Chinese exclusion law came into force with an- 
 nexation. In this effort to break down Japanese 
 soHdarity some eight thousand Koreans have been 
 mixed with them during the past five years, and 
 these also have begun the transit to California. 
 
 Although the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans are 
 the familiar examples often cited of low standards of 
 living, yet their wages in their native countries are 
 higher than those of the South Italians and equal to 
 those of the Slavs. They earn $4 or $5 a month and 
 spend $2 or $3 for living. In Hawaii they get $18 
 to $20 a month, and on the Pacific coast $35 to $50. 
 
 In the past two or three years a tiny dripping of 
 immigration has found its way from another vast 
 empire of Asiatic population — India. Some two 
 hundred are admitted each year. The populations 
 of that land are growing discontented as they see 
 Indians returned from Natal, where they earned $20 
 to $35 a month, while at home they get only $3 to 
 $7 imder a penal contract system. The American 
 consul at Calcutta reports ten sturdy Punjab Mo- 
 hammedans inquiring the way to America and 
 telling of their friends at work on American dairy 
 farms. In his judgment they are stronger and more 
 intelhgent than the Chinese coolies and are pref- 
 erable for work on the Panama Canal. The self- 
 governing British colonies have educational restric- 
 103 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 tions designed to prevent Asiatic immigration, 
 whether of British subjects or aliens; ' other colonies 
 have contract labor. The unrest of India therefore 
 turns the native eyes towards America. 
 
 While America has been welcoming the eastward 
 and backward races she has begun to lose her colonial 
 stock and her Amercianized Teutonic stock. These 
 pioneer elements have kept in front of the westward 
 movement, and now that the American frontier is gone 
 they seek a new frontier in Canada. The Canadian 
 government for several years has sought to fill its 
 vast Western plains with Teutonic races and to dis- 
 courage others. It has expended many thousand 
 dollars for advertising and soliciting in the British 
 Isles, and has maintained twenty to thirty immigra- 
 tion agents in our Western states. The opportuni- 
 ties of British Columbia are now well known, and the 
 American fanners, with agricultural land rising 
 enormously in value, sell out to the newcomer or 
 the acclimated immigrant and betake themselves to 
 double or treble the area for cultivation under the 
 flag of England. They push onward by rail and by 
 wagon, and the ingress of millions of immigrants is 
 reflected in the egress of thousands of Americans.^ 
 
 Indigenous Races. — It is not enough that we have 
 opened our gates to the millions of divergent races in 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa ; we have in these latter days 
 
 ' Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, 1903, 
 Cd. 1 741. 
 
 ' Semple, "American History," etc., p. 332. 
 104 
 
NINETEENTH CENTURY ADDITIONS 
 
 admitted to our fold new types by another process — 
 annexation. 
 
 The Hawaiians are the latest of these oversea 
 races to be brought under our flag, although in the 
 course of eighty years they have been brought under 
 our people. Nowhere else in the world has been 
 seen such finished effect on an aboriginal race of 
 the paradoxes of Western civilization — Christianity, 
 private property, and sexual disease. With a popula- 
 tion of some 300,000 at the time of discovery they had 
 dwindled by domestic wars and imported disease 
 to 140,000 when the missionaries came in 1820, then 
 to 70,000 in 1850 when private property began its 
 hunt for cheap labor, and now they number but 
 30,000. A disease eliminating the unfit of a race 
 protected by monogamy decimates this primitive 
 people on a lower stage of morals. Missionaries 
 from the most intellectual type of American Protes- 
 tantism converted the diminishing nation to Chris- 
 tianity in fifty years. A soil and climate the most 
 favorable in the world for sugar-cane inspired Ameri- 
 can planters and sons of missionaries to displace 
 the unsteady Hawaiians with industrious coolies, and 
 finally to overthrow the government they had under- 
 mined and then annex it to America. Although 
 acquiring American citizenship and sharing equally 
 the suffrage with Caucasians, the decreasing influence 
 of the Hawaiians is further diminished by the ter- 
 ritorial form of government. 
 
 The Spanish War added islands on opposite sides 
 105 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 of the globe, with races resulting from diametrically 
 opposite effects of three centuries of Spanish rule. 
 From Porto Rico the aboriginal Carib had long dis- 
 appeared under the slavery of his conquerors, and 
 his place had been fiUed by the negro slave in sugar 
 cultivation and by the Spaniard and other Euro- 
 peans in coffee cultivation. To-day the negro and 
 mulatto are two-fifths of the million population and 
 the whites three-fifths.* In the Philippine Islands 
 the native races have survived under a theocratic 
 protectorate and even their tribal and racial sub- 
 divisions have been preserved. Two-fifths of their 
 population of 7,600,000 belong to the leading tribe, 
 the Visayans, and one-fifth to another, the Tagalogs. 
 Six other tribes complete the list of "civilized" or 
 Christianized peoples, while 10 per cent remain 
 pagan in the mountains and forests. Four-fifths 
 of the population are illiterate, a proportion the same 
 as in Porto Rico, compared with less than half of the 
 negroes and only one-sixteenth of the whites in the 
 United States.^ 
 
 ' Rowe, Chapter V. 
 
 2 Census of the Philippine Islands. 
 
 106 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 INDUSTRY 
 
 In preceding chapters we have seen the conditions 
 in their foreign homes which spurred the emigrants 
 to seek America. We have seen religious persecu- 
 tion, race oppression, pohtical revolution, militarism, 
 taxation, famine, and poverty conspiring to press 
 upon the imprivileged masses and to drive the more 
 adventurous across the water. But it would be a 
 mistake should we stop at that point and look upon 
 the migration of these dissatisfied elements as only a 
 voluntary movement to better their condition. In 
 fact, had it been left to the initiative of the emigrants 
 the flow of immigration to America could scarcely 
 ever have reached one-half its actual dimensions. 
 While various motives and inducements have always 
 worked together, and it would be rash to assert 
 dogmatically the relative weight of each, yet to one 
 who has carefully noted all the circumstances it is 
 scarcely an exaggeration to say that even more im- 
 portant than the initiative of immigrants have been 
 the efforts of Americans and ship-owners to bring and 
 attract them. Throughout our history these efforts 
 
 have been inspired by one grand, effective motive, — 
 
 107 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 that of making a profit upon the immigrants. The 
 desire to get cheap labor, to take in passenger fares, 
 and to sell land have probably brought more immi- 
 grants than the hard conditions of Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa have sent. Induced immigration has been as 
 potent as voluntary immigration. And it is to this 
 mercenary motive that we owe our manifold variety 
 of races, and especially our influx of backward races. 
 One entire race, the negro, came solely for the profit 
 of ship-owners and landowners. Working people of 
 the colonial period were hoodwinked and kidnapped 
 by shippers and speculators who reimbursed them- 
 selves by indenturing them to planters and farmers. 
 The beginners of other races have come through 
 similar but less coercive inducements, initiated, how- 
 ever, by the demand of those who held American 
 property for speculation or investment. William 
 Penn and his lessees, John Law, the Dutch East 
 India Company, and many of the grantees of lands 
 in the colonies, sent their agents through Western 
 Europe and the British Isles with glowing adver- 
 tisements, advanced transportation, and contracts 
 for indentured service by way of reimbursement. 
 In the nineteenth century new forms of induced 
 migration appeared. Victims of the Irish famine 
 were assisted to emigrate by local and general gov- 
 ernments and by philanthropic societies, and both 
 the Irish and the Germans, whose migration began 
 towards the middle of the century, were, in a meas- 
 ure, exceptions to the general rule of induced im- 
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INDUSTRY 
 
 migration for profit. Several Western states created 
 immigration bureaus which advertised their own 
 advantages for intending immigrants, and Wiscon- 
 sin, especially, in this way settled her lands with a 
 wide variety of races. After the Civil War, induced 
 migration entered upon a vigorous revival. The 
 system of indenturing had long since disappeared, 
 because legislatures and courts declined to recog- 
 nize and enforce contracts for service. Conse- 
 quently a new form of importation appeared imder 
 the direction of middlemen of the same nativity as 
 that of the immigrant. Chinese coolies came under 
 contract with the Six Companies, who advanced their 
 expenses and looked to their own secret agents and 
 tribunals to enforce repayment with profit.* Japa- 
 nese coolies, much later, came tmder contract with 
 immigration companies chartered by the Japanese 
 government.^ Italians were recruited by the padroni, 
 and the bulk of the new Slav immigration from 
 Southeastern Europe is in charge of their own 
 countrymen acting as drummers and middlemen. 
 
 These labor speculators have perfected a system 
 of inducements and through billing as effective as 
 that by which horse and cattle buyers in Kentucky 
 or Iowa collect and forward their living freight to the 
 markets of Europe. A Croatian of the earlier im- 
 migration, for example, sets up a saloon in South 
 
 ' Lalor's " Cyclopedia of Political Economy, Political Science, 
 and United States History," article on "Chinese Immigration." 
 ^ Industrial Commission, 19 : 679. 
 log 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Chicago and becomes an employment bureau for his 
 "greener" countrymen, and also ticket agent on 
 commission for the steamship companies. His 
 confederates are stationed along the entire route 
 at connecting points, from the villages of Croatia to 
 the saloon in Chicago. In Croatia they go among 
 the laborers and picture to them the high wages and 
 abundant work in America. They induce them 
 to sell their little belongings and they furnish them 
 with through tickets. They collect them in com- 
 panies, give them a countersign, and send them on to 
 their fellow-agent at Fiume, thence to Genoa or other 
 port whence the American steerage vessel sails. In 
 New York they are met by other confederates, whom 
 they identify by their countersign, and again they 
 are safely transferred and shipped to their destina- 
 tion. Here they are met by their enterprising 
 countryman, lodged and fed, and within a day or 
 two handed over to the foreman in a great steel plant, 
 or to the "boss" of a construction gang on a railway, 
 or to a contractor on a large public improvement. 
 After they have earned and saved a little money they 
 send for their friends, to whom the "boss" has 
 promised jobs. Again their lodging-house country- 
 man sells them the steamship ticket and arranges for 
 the safe delivery of those for whom they have sent. 
 In this way immigration is stimulated, and new races 
 are induced to begin their American colonization. 
 Eventually the pioneers send for their families, and 
 it is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the immi- 
 
 IIO 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 grants in recent years have come on prepaid tickets 
 or on money sent to them from America.' 
 
 The significance of this new and highly perfected 
 form of inducement will appear when we look back 
 for a moment upon the legislation governing immigra- 
 tion. 
 
 Immigration Legislation. — At the close of the 
 Civil War, with a vast territory newly opened to the 
 West by the railroads, Congress enacted a law throw- 
 ing wide open our doors to the immigrants of all 
 lands. It gave new guaranties for the protection of 
 naturalized citizens in renouncing allegiance to their 
 native countries, declaring that "expatriation is a 
 natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable 
 to the enjoyment of the rights of Ufe, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness." ^ 
 
 In the same year, 1868, the famous Burlingame 
 treaty was negotiated with China, by which Ameri- 
 cans in China and Chinese in America should enjoy 
 all the privileges, immunities, and exemptions en- 
 joyed by citizens of the most favored nation. These 
 steps favorable to immigration were in line with the 
 long-continued policy of the country from the earliest 
 colonial times. 
 
 But a new force had come into American politics — 
 the wage-earner. From this time forth the old 
 
 ' Industrial Commission, Vol. XV, see index, " Prepaid Tickets," 
 p. 818. 
 
 ^ United States Revised Statutes, 1901, Section 1999, Act of 
 July 28, 1868. 
 
 Ill 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 policies were violently challenged. High wages were 
 to be pitted against high profits. The cheap labor 
 which was eagerly sought by the corporations and 
 large property owners was just as eagerly fought by 
 the unpropertied wage-earners. Of course neither 
 party conceded that it was selfishly seeking its own 
 interest. Those who expected profits contended that 
 cheap foreign labor was necessary for the develop- 
 ment of the country; that American natural resources 
 were unbounded, but American workmen could not 
 be found for the rough work needed to turn these 
 resources into wealth; that America should be in 
 the future, as it had been in the past, a haven for the 
 oppressed of all lands; and that in no better way 
 could the principles of American democracy be 
 spread to all peoples of the earth than by welcom- 
 ing them and teaching them in our midst. 
 
 The wage-earners have not been so fortunate in 
 their protestations of disinterestedness. They were 
 compelled to admit that though they themselves had 
 been immigrants or the children of immigrants, they 
 were now denying to others what Bad been a bless- 
 ing to them. Yet they were able to set forward one 
 supreme argument which our race problems are every 
 day more and more showing to be sound. The 
 future of American democracy is the future of the 
 American wage-earner. To have an enlightened and 
 patriotic citizenship we must protect the wages and 
 standard of living of those who constitute the bulk of 
 the citizens. This argimient had been offered by 
 
 112 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 employers themselves when they were seeking a 
 protective tariff against the importation of "pauper- 
 made" goods. What wonder that the wage-earner 
 should use the same argument to keep out the pau- 
 per himself, and especially that he should begin by 
 applying the argument to those races which showed 
 themselves unable rapidly to assimilate, and thereby 
 make a stand for high wages and high standards of 
 living. Certain it is that had the white wage-earners 
 possessed the suffrage and political influence during 
 colonial times, the negro would not have been ad- 
 mitted in large numbers, and we should have been 
 spared that race problem which of all is the largest 
 and most nearly insoluble. 
 
 For it must be observed in general that race 
 antagonism occurs on the same competitive level. 
 What appear often to be religious, political, and social 
 animosities are economic at bottom, and the substance 
 of the economic struggle is the advantage which third 
 parties get when competitors hold each other down. 
 The Southern planter was not hostile to the negro 
 slave — he was his friend and protector. His nurse 
 was the negro "mammy," his playmates were her 
 children, and the mulatto throws light on his views 
 of equality. It was the poor white who hated the 
 negro and fled from his presence to the hills and the 
 frontier, or sank below his level, despised by white and 
 black. In times of freedom and reconstruction it is 
 not the great landowner or employer that leads in the 
 exhibition of race hostiUty, but the small farmer or 
 I 113 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 wage-earner.' The one derives a profit from the 
 presence of the negro — the other loses his job or his 
 farm. With the progress of white democracy in place 
 of the old aristocracy, as seen in South Carolina, 
 hostility to the negro may be expected to increase. 
 With the elimination of the white laborer, as seen in 
 the black counties, the relations of negro and planter 
 are harmonious.^ 
 
 So it is in the North. The negro or immigrant 
 strike breaker is befriended by the employer, but 
 hated by the employee. The Chinaman or Japanese 
 in Hawaii or California is praised and sought after 
 by the employer and householder, but dreaded by 
 the wage-earner and domestic. Investors and land- 
 owners see their properties rise in value by the com- 
 petition of races, but the competitors see their wages 
 and jobs diminish. The increase of wealth intensi- 
 fies the difference and raises up professional classes 
 to the standpoint of the capitalists. With both of 
 them the privilege of leisure depends on the presence 
 of servants, but the wage-earners do their own work. 
 As the immigrant rises in the scale, the small farmer, 
 
 ' Fleming, pp. 692, 693. 
 
 ^ " If I were asked what one factor makes most for the amicable 
 relations between the races in the Delta, I should say, without 
 hesitation, the absence of a white laboring class, particularly of 
 field laborers." — Stone, "The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi 
 Delta,'' p. 241. "There is comparatively little crime in the 
 Black Belt and in the White Belt. It is in the counties where the 
 races meet on something like numerical equality and in economic 
 competition that the maximum of crime is charged against 
 negroes." — Atlanta Umversity Publications, No. 9, p. 48. 
 114 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 contractor, or merchant feels his competition and 
 begins to join in measures of race protection. 
 
 This hostility is not primarily racial in character. 
 It is the competitive struggle for standards of living. 
 It appears to be racial because for the most part 
 races have different standards. But where different 
 races agree on their standards the racial struggle 
 ceases, and the negro, Italian, Slav, and American 
 join together in the class struggle of a trade-imion. 
 On the other hand, if the same race has different 
 standards, the economic struggle breaks down even 
 the strongest affinities of race. The Russian Jew 
 in the sweat-shop turns against the immigrant Jew, 
 fleeing from the very persecution that he himself has 
 escaped, and taking his place in the employment 
 of the capitalist German Jew.' It is an easy and 
 
 ' In 1905, after losing a strike in New York, the General Execu- 
 tive Board of the United Garment Workers of America, consisting 
 with one exception of Russian Jews, adopted the following resolu- 
 tions : — 
 
 Resolved, That the unprecedented movement of the very poor 
 in America from Europe in the last three years has resulted in 
 wholly changing the previous social, political, and economic as- 
 pects of the immigration question. The enormous accessions to 
 the ranks of our competing wage-workers, being to a great extent 
 tmemployed, or only partly employed at uncertain wages, are 
 lowering the standard of living among the masses of the working 
 people of this country, without giving promise to uplift the great 
 body of immigrants themselves. The overstocking of the labor 
 market has become a menace to many trade-unions, especially 
 those of the lesser skilled workers. Little or no benefit can 
 possibly accrue to an increasing proportion of the great numbers 
 yet coming; they are unfitted to battle intelligently for their rights 
 IIS 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, 
 employer, or investor, placed above the arena of 
 competition, to proclaim the equal right of all races 
 to American opportunities; to avow his own willing- 
 ness to give way should even a better Chinaman, 
 Hindu, or Turk come in to take his place; and 
 to rebuke the racial hatred of those who resist 
 this displacement. His patriotism and world-wide 
 brotherhood cost him and his family nothing, and 
 indeed they add to his profits and leisure. Could 
 he reahze his industrial position, and picture in 
 
 in this republic, to whose present burdens they but add others 
 still greater. The fate of the majority of the foreign wage-workers 
 now here has served to demonstrate on the largest possible scale 
 that immigration is no solution of the world-wide problem of 
 poverty. 
 
 Resolved, That we call on American trade unionists to oppose 
 emphatically the proposed scheme of government distribution of 
 immigrants, since it would be an obvious means of directly and 
 cheaply furnishing strike breakers to the combined capitalists 
 now seeking destruction of the trade-unions. 
 
 Resolved, That we condemn all forms of assisted immigration, 
 through charitable agencies or otherwise. 
 
 Resolved, That we warn the poor of the earth against coming 
 to America with false hopes; it is our duty to inform them that 
 the economic situation in this country is changing with the same 
 rapidity as the methods of industry and commerce. 
 
 Resolved, That with respect to immigration we call on the 
 government of the United States for a righteous relief of the wage- 
 workers now. in America. We desire that Congress should either 
 (i) suspend immigration totally for a term of years; or (2) put 
 into force such an illiteracy test as will exclude the ignorant, and 
 also impose such a head tax as will compel immigrants to pay 
 their full footing here and be sufficient to send back all those who 
 within a stated period should become public dependants. 
 116 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 imagination that of his fellow-citizens, their attitude 
 would not appear less disinterested than his own. 
 The immigrant comes as a wage-earner, and the 
 American wage-earner bears the initial cost of his 
 Americanization. Before he acquired the suffrage 
 his protest was imheard — after he gained political 
 power he began to protect himself. 
 
 The first outbreak of the new-found strength of the 
 American wage-earner was directed against a race 
 superior even to the negro immigrants in industry, 
 frugality, intelligence, and civilization — the Chinese. 
 And this outbreak was so powerful that, in spite of all 
 appeals to the traditions and liberties of America, the 
 national government felt driven to repudiate the treaty 
 so recently signed with the highest manifestations of 
 faith, good-will, and international comity. 
 
 Very early in the settlement of California the 
 Chinaman had encountered hostile legislation. The 
 state election had been carried by the Knownothings 
 as early as 1854. Discriminating taxes, ordinances, 
 and laws were adopted, and even immigration was 
 regulated by the state legislature. But the state and 
 federal courts declared such legislation invalid as 
 violating treaties or interfering with international 
 relations. Then the wage-earning element of Cali- 
 fornia joined as one inan in demanding action by 
 the federal government, and eventually, by the 
 treaty of 1880 and the law of 1888, Chinese laborers 
 were excluded.' Thus did the Caucasian wage- 
 
 ' Smith, "Emigration and Immigration," pp. 238-26J. 
 117 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 earner score his first and signal victory in reversing 
 what his opponents proclaimed were "principles 
 coeval with the foiindation of our government." 
 
 The next step was the Alien Contract Labor law 
 of 1885 and 1888, placed on the statute books through 
 the efforts of the Knights of Labor and the trades- 
 unions. As early as 1875 Congress had prohibited 
 the immigration of paupers, criminal, and immoral 
 persons, but the law of 1885 went to the other ex- 
 treme and was designed to exclude industrial classes. 
 The law is directed against prepayment of transpor- 
 tation, assistance, or encouragement of foreigners 
 to immigrate under contract to perform labor in the 
 United States, and provides for the prosecution of 
 the importer and deportation of the contract immi- 
 grant. This law has been enforced against skilled 
 labor, which comes mainly from northwestern 
 Europe, but, owing to the new stysem of padroni 
 and middlemen above described, it cannot be en- 
 forced against the unskilled laborers of Southern 
 and Eastern Europe, since it cannot be shown that 
 they have come under contract to perform labor. 
 By the amendment and revised law adopted in 1903, 
 after considerable discussion, and an effort on the 
 part of the labor unions to strengthen the law, it 
 was extended so as to exclude not only those coming 
 under contract but also those coming under ofiers 
 and promises of employment.* 
 
 From what precedes we see that there are two 
 
 ' Act of March 3, 1903, Sec. 2. 
 118 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 exactly opposite points of view from which the sub- 
 ject of immigration is approached. One is the pro- 
 duction of wealth; the other is the distribution of 
 wealth. He who takes the standpoint of production 
 sees the enormous undeveloped resources of this 
 country — the mines to be exploited, railroads and 
 highways to be built and rebuilt, farms to be opened 
 up or to be more intensively cultivated, manufactures 
 to be multiplied, and the markets of the world to be 
 conquered by our exports, while there are not enough 
 workmen, or not enough willing to do the hard and 
 disagreeable work at the bottom. 
 
 He who takes the standpoint of distribution sees 
 the huge fortunes, the low wages, the small share of 
 the product going to labor, the sweat-shop, the 
 slums, all on account of the excessive competition of 
 wage-earner against wage-earner. 
 
 Consider first the bearing of immigration on the 
 production of wealth. 
 
 Immigration and Wealth Production. — Over four- 
 fifths of the immigrants are in the prime of Hfe — 
 the ages between fourteen and forty-five. In the year 
 1906 only 12 out of every 100 were under fourteen 
 years of age, and only 4.5 out of every 100 over 
 forty-five years of age. The census of 1900 offers 
 some interesting comparisons between the native- 
 bom and the foreign-bom in this matter of age dis- 
 tribution. It shows quite plainly that a large pro- 
 portion of the native-bom population is below the 
 age of industrial production, fully 39 per cent, or 
 119 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 two-fifths, being under fifteen years of age, while 
 only 5 per cent of the foreign-bom are of corre- 
 sponding ages. On the other hand, the ages fifteen 
 to forty-four include 46 per cent of the native and 58 
 per cent of the foreign-bom. This is shown in the 
 diagram based on five-year age periods. The native 
 bom are seen to group themselves in a symmetrical 
 pyramid, with the children under five as the wide 
 foundation, gradually tapering to the ages of eighty 
 and eighty-four, but for the foreign-bom they show 
 a double pyramid, tapering in both directions from 
 the ages of thirty-five to thirty-nine, which include 
 
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 120 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
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 the largest five-year 
 group. Thus, immi- 
 gration brings to us a 
 population of working 
 ages unhampered by 
 unproductive mouths 
 to be fed, and, if we 
 consider alone that 
 which produces the 
 wealth of this country 
 and not that which 
 consumes it, the immi- 
 grants add more to the 
 country than does the 
 same number of natives 
 of equal ability. Their 
 home countries have 
 borne the expense of 
 rearing them up to the 
 industrial period of 
 their lives, and then 
 America, without that 
 heavy expense, reaps 
 whatever profits there 
 are on the investment. 
 In another respect 
 does immigration add 
 to our industrial popu- 
 lation more than would 
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 121 
 
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RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 crease in native population, namely, by the large ex- 
 cess of men over women. In igo6, over two-thirds 
 of the immigrants were males and less than one-third 
 were females. This is shown on the accompanying 
 diagram, as well as the fact based on the census sta- 
 tistics that among the foreign-bom the men predom- 
 inate over the women in the ratio of 540 to 460, while 
 among the native-bom population the sexes are about 
 equal, being in the proportion of 507 males to 493 
 females. 
 
 This small proportion of women and children 
 shows, of course, that it is the workers, not the 
 families, who seek America. Yet the proportions 
 widely vary for different nationalities. Among the 
 Jews 48 per cent are females and 28 per cent chil- 
 dren. This persecuted race moves in a body, ex- 
 pecting to make America its home. At the other 
 extreme the Greeks send only 4 per cent females 
 and 3 per cent children, the Croatians 13 per cent 
 females and 4 per cent children, the South Italians 21 
 per cent females and 11 per cent children. These 
 are races whose immigration has only recently begun, 
 and naturally enough the women and children, except 
 in the case of the Jews, do not accompany the work- 
 men. A race of longer migration, like the Germans, 
 has 41 per cent females and 15 per cent children. 
 The Irish have a peculiar position. Alone of all 
 the races do the women equal the men, but only 5 
 per cent are children. Irish girls seeking domestic 
 service explain this preponderance of women, 
 
 123 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 Significant and interesting facts regarding other 
 races may be seen by studying the table entitled 
 " Industrial Relations of Immigrants." 
 
 Such being the proportions of industrial energy 
 furnished by immigration, what is the quality? 
 Much the larger proportion of immigrants are classed 
 as unskilled, including laborers and servants. Omit- 
 ting those who have "no occupation," including 
 mainly women and children, who are 30.5 per cent 
 of the total, only 21.7 per cent of the remainder who 
 are working immigrants are skilled, and 73.4 per 
 cent are unskilled. The proportions vary greatly 
 among the different races. The largest element of 
 skilled labor is among the Jews, a city people, two- 
 thirds of whom are skilled workmen. Nearly the 
 same proportion of the Scotch and Welsh and over 
 one-half of the English and Bohemians are skilled 
 mechanics. Nearly one-third of the Germans and 
 Dutch are skilled, and one-fourth of the Scandina- 
 vians. At the other extreme, only 3 to 5 per cent of 
 the Ruthenians, Croatians, Roumanians, and Slovaks 
 are skilled, and 8 to 10 per cent of the Magyars, 
 Lithuanians, and Poles. One-fifth of the North 
 Italians and one-sixth of the South Italians are 
 skilled. These and other proportions are shown in 
 the statistical table. 
 
 The skilled labor which comes to America, espe- 
 cially from Northern and Western Europe, occu- 
 pies a peculiar position in our industries. In the 
 first place, the most capable workmen have per- 
 123 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 manent places at home, and it is, in general, only 
 those who cannot command situations who seek their 
 fortunes abroad. The exceptions to this rule are in 
 the beginnings of an industry like that of tin plate, 
 when a large proportion of the industry moved bodily 
 to America, and the highly skilled tin workers of 
 Wales brought a kind of industrial ability that had 
 not hitherto existed in this country. As for the 
 bulk of skilled immigrants, they do not represent the 
 highest skill of the countries whence they come. 
 
 On the other hand, the European skilled workman 
 is usually better trained than the American, and 
 in many branches of industry, especially machinery 
 and ship-building, the English and Scotch immigrants 
 command those superior positions where an all- 
 round training is required. 
 
 This peculiar situation is caused by the highly 
 specialized character of American industry. In no 
 country has division of labor and machinery been 
 carried as far as here. By division of labor the skilled 
 trades have been split up into simple operations, 
 each of which in itself requires little or no skill, and 
 the boy who starts in as a beginner is kept at one 
 operation so that he does not learn a trade. The 
 old-time journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic 
 who measured his customer, cut the cloth and trim- 
 mings, basted, sewed, and pressed the suit. Now we 
 have factories which make only coats, others which 
 make only vests, others trousers, and there are chil- 
 dren's knee-pants factories and even ladieg' tailor 
 124 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 establishments where the former seamstress sees her 
 precious skill dissipated among a score of imskilled 
 workers. Thus the journeyman tailor is displaced by 
 the factory, where the coat passes through the hands 
 of thirty to fifty different men and women, each of 
 whom can learn his peculiar operation in a month or 
 two. The same is true in greater or less degree in 
 all industries. Even in the building trades in the 
 larger cities there are as many kinds of bricklayers 
 as there are kinds of walls to be built, and as many 
 kinds of carpenters as there are varieties of woodwork. 
 So it is with machinery. The American employer 
 does not advertise for a "machinist" — he wants a 
 "lathe hand" or a "drill-press hand," and the 
 majority of his "hands" are perhaps only automatic 
 machine tenders. The employer cannot afford to 
 transfer these hands from one job to another to 
 enable them to "learn the trade." He must keep 
 them at one operation, for it is not so much skill 
 that he wants as cheap labor and speed. Con- 
 sequently, American industry is not producing all- 
 round mechanics, and the employers look to Europe 
 for their skilled artisans. In England the trade- 
 unions have made it their special business to see that 
 every apprentice learns every part of his trade, and 
 they have prevented employers from splitting up 
 the trades and specializing machinery and thereby 
 transforming the mechanic into the "hand." Were 
 it not for immigration, American industries would 
 ere now have been compelled to give more attention 
 
 I2S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 to apprenticeship and the training of competent 
 mechanics. The need of apprenticeship and trade 
 schools is being more seriously felt every year, for, 
 notwithstanding the progress of division of labor 
 and machinery, the all-round mechanic continues to 
 play an important part in the shop and factory. 
 American trade-unions are gaining strength, and one 
 of their most insistent demands is the protection of 
 apprenticeship. The bricklayers' and carpenters' 
 unions of Chicago even secure from their employers 
 instruction for apprentices in school. Not much 
 headway in this line, however, has yet been made, 
 and American industry has become abnormal, we 
 might almost say suicidal, or at any rate, non-self- 
 supporting. By extreme division of labor and mar- 
 vellous application of machinery it makes possible 
 the wholesale employment in factories of the farm 
 laborers of Europe and their children, and then 
 depends on Europe for the better-trained types of 
 the skilled mechanic, who, on account of the farm 
 laborer, have not been able to learn their trade in 
 America. 
 
 Not only does immigration bring to America the 
 strongest, healthiest, and most energetic and adven- 
 turous of the work-people of Europe and Asia, but 
 those who come work much harder than they did 
 at home. Migration tears a man away from the 
 traditions, the routine, the social props on which he 
 has learned to rely, and throws him among strangers 
 upon his own resources. He must swim or drown. 
 126 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 At the same time he earns higher wages and eats 
 more nourishing food than he had ever thought 
 within reach of one in his station. His ambition is 
 fired, he is stirred by the new tonic of feeUng himself 
 actually rising in the world. He pictures to himself 
 a home of his own, he economizes and saves money 
 to send to his friends and family, or to return to 
 his beloved land a person of importance. Watch a 
 gang of Italians shovelling dirt under an Irish boss, 
 or a sweat-shop of Jewish tailors under a small 
 contractor, and you shall see such feverish produc- 
 tion of wealth as an American-bom citizen would 
 scarcely endure. Partly fear, partly hope, make the 
 fresh immigrant the hardest, if not the most intelli- 
 gent, worker in our industries. 
 
 Industrial Capacities of Different Races. — But, 
 however hard one may work, he can only exercise 
 the gifts with which nature has endowed him. 
 Whether these gifts are contributed by race or by 
 civilization, we shall inquire when we come to the 
 problems of amalgamation and assimilation. At 
 present we are concerned with the varying industrial 
 gifts and capacities of the various races as they 
 actually exist at the time when immigration, annexa- 
 tion, or conquest takes place. 
 
 The mental and moral qualities suited to make 
 productive workers depend upon the character of the 
 industry. It is not conceivable that the immigrants 
 of the present day from Southern Europe and from 
 Asia could have succeeded as frontiersmen and 
 127 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 pioneers in the settlement of the country. In all 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa there was but one race in 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that had 
 the preliminary training necessary to plunge into the 
 wilderness, and in the face of the Indian to establish 
 homes and agriculture. This was the English and 
 the Scotch-Irish. The Spaniards and the French 
 were pioneers and adventurers, but they established 
 only trading stations. Accustomed to a paternal 
 government they had not, as a people, the self- 
 reliance and capacity for sustained exertion re- 
 quired to push forward as individuals, and to cut 
 themselves oflE from the support of a government 
 across the ocean. They shrank from the herculean 
 task of clearing the forests, planting crops among 
 the stumps, and living miles away from their neigh- 
 bors. True, the pioneers had among their number 
 several of German, French, and Dutch descent, 
 but these belonged to the second and third genera- 
 tions descended from the immigrants and thrown 
 from the time of childhood among their English- 
 Scotch neighbors. The French trappers and ex- 
 plorers are famous, and have left their names on our 
 map. But it was the English race that estabhshed 
 itself in America, not because it was first to come, not 
 because of its armies and navies, but because of its 
 agriculture. Every farm newly carved out of the 
 wilderness became a permanent foothold, and soon 
 again sent out a continuous colony of sons and 
 daughters to occupy the fertile land. Based on this 
 128 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 self-reliant, democratic, industrial conquest of the 
 new world the military conquest naturally, inevita- 
 bly followed. 
 
 But at the present day the character of industry 
 has entirely changed. The last quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century saw the vacant lands finally occupied 
 and the tribe of frontiersmen coming to an end. 
 Population now began to recoil upon the East and 
 the cities. This afforded to manufactures and to the 
 mining industries the surplus labor-market so neces- 
 sary for the continuance of large establishments which 
 to-day need thousands of workmen and to-morrow 
 himdreds. Moreover, among the American-bom 
 workmen, as well as the English and Scotch, are not 
 found that docihty, obedience to orders, and patient 
 toil which employers desire where hundreds and 
 thousands are brought like an army under the direc- 
 tion of foremen, superintendents, and managers. 
 Employers now turn for their labor supply to those 
 eastern and southern sections of Europe which have 
 not hitherto contributed to immigration. The first 
 to draw upon these sources in large numbers were the 
 anthracite coal operators of Pennsylvania. In these 
 fields the English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish miners, 
 during and following the period of the Civil War, 
 had effected an organization for the control of wages, 
 and the outrages of a secret society known as the 
 Molly Maguires gave occasion for the importation of 
 new races unaccustomed to unionism, and incapable, 
 on account of language, of cooperation with English- 
 K 129 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 speaking miners. Once introduced in the mining 
 industry, these races rapidly found their way into the 
 unskilled parts of manufactures, into the service of 
 railroads and large contractors. On the construc- 
 tion of the Erie Canal in 1898, of 16,000 workmen, 
 15,000 were imnaturalized Itahans.* The census of 
 1900 showed that while the foreign-bom males were 
 one-fourteenth of the laborers in agriculture, they 
 were three-fourths of the tailors, more than one- 
 half of the cabinet makers, nearly one-half of the 
 miners and quarrymen, tannery workers, marble 
 and stonecutters, more than two-fifths of the 
 boot and shoe-makers and textile workers, one- 
 third of the coopers, iron and steel workers, wood- 
 workers and miscellaneous laborers, one-fourth of 
 the carpenters, painters, and plasterers, and one-fifth 
 of the sawmill workers.^ The foreign-bom females 
 numbered nearly two-fifths of the female cotton-mill 
 operatives and tailors, one-third of the woollen-mill 
 operatives, one-fourth of the tobacco and silk-mill 
 operatives. 
 
 On the Pacific slope the Chinese and Japanese 
 immigrants have filled the place occupied by the 
 southeast European in the East and the negro in 
 the South. They were the workmen who built the 
 Pacific railroads, and without them it is said that 
 these railroads could not have been constructed vmtil 
 several years after their actual completion. 
 
 ' New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1898, p. 1155. 
 ' Twelfth Census, " Occupations," p. clzzxvii. 
 130 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 The immigration of the Chinese reached its highest 
 figures prior to the exclusion laws of 1882, and since 
 that time has been but an insignificant contribution. 
 In their place have come the Japanese, a race whose 
 native land, in proportion to its cultivable area, is 
 more densely populated than any other country in 
 the world. The Chinese and Japanese are perhaps 
 the most industrious of all races, while the Chinese 
 are the most docile. The Japanese excel in imitative- 
 ness, but are not as reliable as the Chinese. Neither 
 race, so far as their immigrant representatives are 
 concerned, possesses the originality and ingenuity 
 which characterize the competent American and 
 British mechanic. In the Hawaiian Islands, where 
 they have enjoyed greater opportimities than else- 
 where, they are found to be capable workmen of the 
 skilled trades, provided they are under the direction 
 of white mechanics.* But their largest field of work 
 in Hawaii is in the unskilled cultivation of the great 
 sugar plantations. Here they have been likened to 
 "a sort of agricultural automaton," and it becomes 
 possible to place them in large numbers vuider skilled 
 direction, and thus to secure the best results from 
 their docility and industry. 
 
 In the United States itself the plantation form 
 of agriculture, as distinguished from the domestic 
 form, has always been based on a supply of labor 
 from backward or un-Americanized races. This fact 
 has a bearing on the alleged tendency of agriculture 
 • Report on Hawaii, BuUetin No, 47, pp. 780 783. 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 toward large farms. Ten years ago it seemed that 
 the great "bonanza" farms were destined to displace 
 the small farms, just as the trust displaces the small 
 manufacturer. But it is now recognized that the 
 reverse movement is in progress, and that the small 
 farmer can compete successfully with the great 
 farmer. It has not, however, been pointed out that 
 the question is not merely an economic one and that 
 it depends upon the industrial character of the races 
 engaged in agriculture. The thrifty, hard-working 
 and intelligent American or Teutonic farmer is able 
 to economize and purchase his own small farm and 
 compete successfully with the large undertaking. 
 He is even beginning to do this in Hawaii since the 
 compulsory labor of his large competitors was abol- 
 ished.' But the backward, thriftless, and imintelli- 
 gent races succeed best when employed in gangs on 
 large estates. The cotton and sugar fields of the 
 South with their negro workers have their counter- 
 part in the plantations of Hawaii with their Chinese 
 and Japanese, and in the newly developed sugar-beet 
 fields of Nebraska, Colorado, and CaUfomia, with 
 their Russians, Bohemians, Japanese, and Mexicans. 
 In the domestic or small form of agriculture the bulk 
 of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe 
 are not greatly desired as wage-earners, and they do 
 not succeed as proprietors and tenants because they 
 lack oversight and business ability. Where they are 
 located in colonies under favorable auspices the 
 ' Report on Hawaii, Bulletin No. 66, pp. 441-447. 
 132 
 
INDUSTRY 
 
 Italians have achieved notable success, and in the 
 course of Americanization they will doubtless rival 
 older nationaUties. But in the immigrant stage 
 they are helpless, and it is the immigrants from 
 Northwestern Europe, the Germans and Scandina- 
 vians, whose thrift, self-reliance, and intensive agri- 
 culture have made them from the start the model 
 farmers of America. 
 
 The Jewish immigrant, particularly, is unfitted for 
 the life of a pioneer. Remarkably individualistic in 
 character, his field of enterprise is society, and not the 
 land. Of the thirty thousand families sent out from 
 New York by industrial and agricultural removal 
 societies, nine-tenths are located in industry and 
 trade, and the bulk of the remainder, who are placed 
 on farms, succeed by keeping summer boarders. 
 Depending on boarders, they neglect agriculture and 
 buy their food-stuff. Their largest colony of hoped- 
 for agriculturists, Woodbine, New Jersey, has become 
 a clothing factory.* Yet the factory system, with its 
 discipline and regular hours, is distasteful to the Jew's 
 individualism. He prefers the sweat-shop, with its 
 going and coming. If possible, he rises through 
 peddling and merchandising. 
 
 These are a few of the many illustrative facts 
 which might be set forth to show that the changing 
 character of immigration is made possible by the 
 changing character of industry; and that races 
 
 ' Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, Annual 
 Reports. 
 
 133 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 wholly incompetent as pioneers and independent 
 proprietors are able to find a place when once manu- 
 factures, mines, and railroads have sprung into being, 
 with their captains of industry to guide and super- 
 vise their semi-intelligent work. 
 
 134 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 LABOR 
 
 We have seen that the character of the immigrants 
 for whom a place can be found depends upon the 
 character of the industry. It also depends upon the 
 laws governing property in labor. Here the in- 
 dustrial problem widens out into the social problem. 
 
 There are four variations in the treatment of labor 
 as property in the United States, each of which has 
 had its peculiar effect on the character of immigra- 
 tion, or has grown out of the relations between races. 
 They are slavery, peonage, contract labor, and free 
 labor. Under slavery the laborer and his children 
 are compelled by law throughout their lifetime to 
 work for an owner on terms dictated and enforced 
 by him. Under peonage the laborer is compelled 
 by law to pay off a debt by means of his labor, and 
 under contract labor he is compelled by law to carry 
 out a contract to work. To enforce peonage and 
 contract labor the offence of "running away" is 
 made punishable by imprisonment at forced labor, 
 or by extension of the period of service. Under free- 
 dom the law refuses to enforce a contract to work, 
 making this an exception to the sacredness of con- 
 ^35 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 tracts, and refuses to enforce the payment of a debt 
 by specific service. This leaves to the contractor or 
 creditor the usually empty relief of suing for damages. 
 The significance of these varying degrees of servile, 
 semi-servile, and free labor will be seen in the follow- 
 ing discussion of the social relations of the superior 
 and inferior races. 
 
 In the entire circuit of the globe those races which 
 have developed under a tropical sun are found to be 
 indolent and fickle. From the standpoint of survival 
 of the fittest, such vices are virtues, for severe and 
 continuous exertion under tropical conditions bring 
 prostration and predisposition to disease. Therefore, 
 if such races are to adopt that industrious life which 
 is a second nature to races of the temperate zones, it 
 is only through some form of compulsion. The negro 
 could not possibly have found a place in American 
 industry had he come as a free man, and at the pres- 
 ent time contract labor and peonage with the crime 
 of "running away" are recognized in varying de- 
 grees by the laws of Southern states. These statutes 
 have been held unconstitutional by the Supreme 
 Court,* under an act of Congress passed in 1867, 
 but the condition of peonage which they contem- 
 plate is considered by many planters as essential to 
 the continuance of the cotton industry. One of 
 them, in southwestern Georgia, a graduate of Colum- 
 bia College, with five years of business training in the 
 
 ' Clyatt V. U.S., 97 U.S., 207 (1903) ; Peonage Cases, 123 
 Fed. 671. 
 
 136 
 
LABOR 
 
 Northern states, is quoted in an interview as fol- 
 lows:' — 
 
 "We have two ways of handling our plantations. 
 We rent small sections of forty acres each, and with 
 these go a plough and the mule. In addition, I have 
 about 450 hands who work on wages. These men 
 are paid nine dollars a month, in addition to a fixed 
 rate of food, which amounts to four pounds of meat 
 a week, a certain percentage of vegetables, tobacco, 
 sugar, flour, and some other commodities. 
 
 "These negroes live on the plantation, are given a 
 roof over their heads, have garden patches, and sev- 
 eral other more or less valuable privileges. They 
 invariably come to me for small advances of money. 
 
 "These advances of money and rations and cloth- 
 ing, although there is not much of the latter, are 
 frequently suflScient to put the negro in debt to us. 
 The minute he finds he is in debt he naturally con- 
 ceives it to be easier to go to work somewhere else 
 and begin all over again, instead of paying his debts. 
 
 " Now, when a negro runs away and violates his 
 contract, leaving us in the lurch, not only short of 
 his labor, but short of the advances we have made to 
 him in money and goods, what would happen if we 
 depended simply and solely on our right to sue? 
 In the first place, with 450 hands we would have 
 450 suits before the season is out, and if we won 
 them all we would not be able to collect forty-five 
 cents. 
 
 ' New York Berald, June 24, 1903. 
 137 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 " The result is, that in Georgia and Alabama, and 
 I believe in other states, the law recognizes the right 
 of the planter to reclaim the laborer who has left in 
 violation of his contract, whether he be actually in 
 debt or not. 
 
 " Whether Judge Jones has declared this law con- 
 stitutional or not, the planters in the black belt will 
 have to maintain their right to claim their contract 
 labor, or else they will have to go out of the business. 
 Under any other system you would find it impossible 
 to get in your cotton, because the negroes at the 
 critical time would simply sit down and refuse to 
 work. When they are well, we compel laborers to 
 go to the field by force. This is the truth, and there 
 is no use lying about it." 
 
 This reasoning is entirely logical from the business 
 standpoint. If production of wealth is the standard, 
 contracts must be fulfilled and debts must be paid. 
 Otherwise capital will not embark in business. But 
 the reasoning does not stop with the negro. Once 
 established, the practice spreads to other races. 
 Instances are cited of white men held in peonage, 
 negroes holding other negroes, and Italians forced 
 to work in a phosphate mine.' It is an easy matter 
 to get working men in debt. Many thousand rural 
 justices keeping no records of convictions, hundreds 
 of constables with fees depending on convictions, 
 scores of petty crimes with penalties not usually 
 
 ' The Nation, 83 : 379 (1906); Durand, Herbert, "Peonage in 
 America," Cosmopolitan, 39 : 423 (1905). 
 
 138 
 
LABOR 
 
 enforced, contractors and planters eager for labor 
 at the convict's rating of 35 cents a day — neither 
 the negro nor the poor white is safe. Immigrants 
 avoid a country with such a record. Not only the 
 dread of forced labor for themselves but the dread 
 of competition with the low wages that the forced 
 labor of others implies, keep the immigrants away 
 from the South. The fame of peonage is spread 
 among them before they leave their native land. The 
 business that rests on coerced labor damages the 
 whole community for its own temporary gain. The 
 right to quit work is as sacred for the workman as 
 the right to enforce contracts for the capitalist. It 
 is just as necessary to get energetic labor as it is to 
 get abundant capital to embark in business. By 
 recognizing the right of workmen to violate contracts, 
 the employer learns to content himself with contracts 
 that will not hurt when violated. He learns to ap- 
 peal to the workman's motive to industry by methods 
 that are not coercive. Admitting that the bulk of 
 what is said about the negro's fickleness is true, 
 he nevertheless is indiscriminately maUgned. The 
 thousands that are unreliable furnish a cloak for 
 suppressing the hundreds that are industrious. I 
 have made comparisons of the pay-rolls of two 
 gas works in Southern cities — the one employing 
 negro stokers at 11 cents an hour, the other whites 
 at 22 cents an hour, and both working 12 hours a day 
 seven days a week. The negroes put in as many 
 hours between pay-days as did the whites, and if they 
 139 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 "laid off" after pay-day it is no more than any class 
 of white workmen would do after two weeks of such 
 exhausting work. The negro in Southern cities can 
 scarcely hope to rise above 12 cents an hour, and 
 white mechanics have a way of working with negro 
 helpers at 10 cents an hour in order to Uft their own 
 wages to 20 cents an hour. White wage-earners 
 and white employers in the South speak of the ne- 
 groes' efforts to get higher wages in the same words 
 and tones as employers in the North speak of white 
 wage-earners who have organized unions and de- 
 manded more pay. A foreman condemned his 
 "niggers" for instability when they were leaving him 
 at 10 cents an hour for a railroad job at i2|^ cents 
 an hour. Praising the Italians in comparison with 
 the negro, he could not think of paying 17I cents an 
 hour for pick-and-shovel work, which Itahans were 
 said to be getting in another section of the state. The 
 right to quit work is the right to get higher wages. 
 If the higher wages are paid and proper treatment 
 accorded, a process of natural selection ensues. The 
 industrious and steady workmen of all races retain 
 the jobs. The gas company referred to above, by a 
 system of graded pay advancing with years of ser- 
 vice, had sorted out a more steady and reliable force . 
 of negroes than they could have secured of whites at 
 the rate of wages paid. The test is indeed a severe 
 one where a race has always been looked upon as 
 servile. With high wages regarded as "white man's 
 wages," the process of individual selection does not 
 140 
 
LABOR 
 
 work out, and the dominant race excuses its resort 
 to whipping, beating, and peonage on the ground 
 of the laziness which its methods of remuneration 
 have not learned to counterbalance. Even the in- 
 dustrious Italians treated in this way would not be 
 industrious — they would leave for other states. 
 
 The Malay races, to which the Filipinos belong, 
 are, like the negroes, careless, thriftless, and disin- 
 clined to continuous exertion. In order to induce 
 the Javanese to work, the Dutch government of Java 
 sets aside a certain tract of government land for 
 coffee planting, and compels each head of a household 
 to set out and keep in order a certain number of coffee 
 trees. On private estates in Java and in other Malay 
 and Indian colonies, such as Burma, Ceylon, British 
 India, where the government does not compel 
 the native to take a contract to work, it nevertheless 
 enforces contracts voluntarily made. In certain 
 provinces of the Philippines " the tenants are usually 
 in debt, and the old law which permits the creditor 
 to imprison the debtor for non-payment of debt is 
 still in force. . . . Landowners of a district fre- 
 quently come together shortly before the crops are 
 sold and agree among themselves how much interest 
 to charge the tenants on their debts. This is for the 
 purpose of charging the highest possible rate and at 
 the same time retain tenants, who then could not 
 leave, finding the same conditions prevailing through- 
 out the district." * In densely populated countries 
 
 ' Rosenberg, American Federationist, October, 1903, p. 1026. 
 141 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 like Java and Southern India, where the native can- 
 not set up for himself, he has no alternative except 
 to work under these contracts, and this is also true 
 in the more thickly populated districts of the Philip- 
 pine Islands. But the case is different in sparsely 
 settled countries like Burma, East Sumatra, and the 
 greater part of the Philippines, where wages are so 
 high that natives are not compelled by necessity to 
 work continuously. "Speaking generally," says 
 Professor Jenks, "the unskilled Filipino laborer, 
 while intelligent enough, is careless and thriftless. 
 He in most cases wishes to take two or three days a 
 week, on the average, to celebrate as feast days. In 
 individual cases, where his wages have been in- 
 creased, he has been known to lessen correspond- 
 ingly the number of days per month which he 
 would work. His income being sufficient to sat- 
 isfy his modest needs, he could see no reason why 
 he should toil longer than was necessary to earn his 
 income." ^ 
 
 Hence in these sparsely settled countries the Dutch 
 and English governments have adopted, and Pro- 
 fessor Jenks, in his report to the War Department, 
 has recommended a limited use of the system of con- 
 tract labor, not, however, for the native, but for 
 imported Chinese. This system has existed in 
 another of our newly acquired possessions, 
 Hawaii, since 1852, where it applied to Chinese, 
 Japanese, Portuguese, and German immigrants, and 
 
 ' Jenks, "Certain Economic Questions," etc., p. 157. 
 142 
 
Filipino Governors 
 (From Census of the Philippine Islands) 
 
LABOR 
 
 whence it was abolished by the act of annexation 
 in 1898.' 
 
 Contract labor of this kind is quite different from 
 the peonage and contract labor of the non-industrial 
 races. It is similar to the indentured service of 
 colonial times, in that the term of each contract is 
 limited to a few years, and the contract is made by 
 way of compensation for advanced expenses of immi- 
 gration. The object is not, as in the case of slavery 
 and peonage, to compel a shiftless race to work, but 
 it is to develop the country by the introduction of an 
 industrious race. The Chinese, after the expiration 
 of their contracts, often become skilled laborers and 
 merchants, and in the latter position their frugality and 
 wiUness make them dangerous neighbors for the 
 native Malay and Filipino races.^ For this reason 
 Professor Jenks recommends that employers be 
 placed imder bonds to return each contract Chinese 
 coolie to China at the expiration of the period of con- 
 tract, not to exceed three years, unless the govern- 
 ment gives special permission for renewal of the con- 
 tract. Governor Taft, in his report for the year 
 1902, while advocating a limited employment of Chi- 
 nese contract coohes, said, "the truth is that, from a 
 pohtical standpoint, the unlimited introduction of the 
 Chinese into these islands would be a great mistake. 
 I believe the objection on the part of the Filipinos 
 to such a course to be entirely logical and justified. 
 
 • Coman, and "Reports on Hawaii." 
 'Jenks, pp. 47i 54, SS, 158. 
 143 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 The development of the islands by Chinamen would 
 be at the expense of the Filipino people, and they 
 may very well resent such a suggestion." ' 
 
 Governor Taft's opinion is strongly supported by 
 the special commissioner of the American Federation 
 of Labor, who, after inquiries in the district surround- 
 ing Manila, reports as follows: — 
 
 "Their reluctance to work, continually harped 
 upon by many employers, is simply the natural reluc- 
 tance of a progressive people to work for low wages 
 under bad treatment. When wages rise above the 
 level of the barest and poorest necessaries of life, 
 and where treatment is fair, there Filipinos are at 
 work in any numbers required " ^ 
 
 The situation here is similar to that of the negroes. 
 In order to get two hundred steady workers at high 
 wages it is necessary to try out a thousand or more. 
 But the reports of the Philippine Commission show 
 that with the process of selection which their engi- 
 neers can pursue by means of the high wages on 
 government work the results are satisfactory.* 
 
 "Of course," continues Mr. Rosenberg in his 
 report, "the Filipino worker cannot successfully 
 compete — cheap as he can live — with the Chinese 
 standard of living, hence the unceasing vilification of 
 the Filipino workers by those employers and their 
 following, who, seeing near by the unlimited supply 
 
 ' United States Philippine Commission, 1902, Part I, p. 22. 
 
 ' Rosenberg, p. 1021. 
 
 ' Philippine Commission, 1902, index, " The Labor Situation." 
 
 144 
 
LABOR 
 
 of cheap Chinese labor, wish these islands to be 
 thrown open to such labor, not only for the purpose 
 of reducing the small wages of the Filipinos, but also 
 to reduce that of the Chinese laborers now here. 
 As one employer stated to me, 'We want more 
 Chinese, to keep them here for one or two years, then 
 ship them back and get another lot, for the Chinese 
 I have here now are becoming too independent and 
 want more pay.' " 
 
 Free Labor. — The free laborer is not compelled 
 by law to work. Then why should he work ? Why 
 does he work ? The answer is found within himself. 
 He wants something that he cannot get without work- 
 ing. Though this may seem a trifling question and 
 a self-evident answer, the question and answer are 
 the foundation of all questions of free institutions. 
 For the non-working races and classes or the 
 spasmodic and unreliable workers are the savages, 
 paupers, criminals, idiots, lunatics, drunkards, and 
 the great tribe of exploiters, "grafters," despots, and 
 "leisure classes," who hve on the work of others. 
 Nearly every question of social pathology may be 
 resolved to this. Why does he not work ? And nearly 
 every social ill would be cured if the non-workers 
 could be brought voluntarily to work. 
 
 There are just two grand motives which induce 
 the freeman to work — necessity and ambition. 
 Necessity is the desire for quantity, quality, and 
 variety of things to be used. The term is elastic. It 
 is psychological, not material. It includes, of course, 
 ^ I4S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the wants of mere animal existence — food, clothing, 
 shelter. But this is a small part. The cost of the 
 mere quantity needed to support life is less than the 
 added cost needed to secure the quality and variety 
 that satisfy the taste and habits. A pig enjoys raw 
 com, but a man requires com cake at five times the 
 cost. Tastes and habits depend on one's childhood, 
 one's training, one's associations, and kind of work. 
 The necessities of a Chinese coolie, Italian immigrant, 
 or negro plantation hand are less, and cost less, than 
 those of a skilled mechanic or a college graduate, 
 because his associations have been different, and 
 his present work is different. But necessity goes 
 farther. It includes the wants of the family consid- 
 ered as a unit, and not merely the wants of the single 
 man or woman, else the race would not continue to 
 increase. Furthermore, social obligations impose 
 added necessity. Compulsory education of children 
 compels parents to support their children instead of 
 living on their wages. Laws regulating sanitation 
 and tenements compel the tenant to pay more rent. 
 The necessities of a farm-hand on the estates of Italy 
 are less than those of the same hand in the cities of 
 America. 
 
 Ambition is the desire for an improved position 
 for one's self and family — for better quality and 
 greater variety of material things. It demands a 
 style of clothing and living suitable to the improved 
 position aspired to. It demands an education for 
 one's children superior to the minimum set by com- 
 146 
 
LABOR 
 
 pulsory schooling. It demands thrift and economy 
 for the sake of independence or the abiUty to hold on 
 until one's demands are conceded. Ambition looks 
 to the future — necessity is based on the past. 
 The negro or the Malay works three days and loafs 
 three because three days' wages procure his necessi- 
 ties. The Chinaman, or Italian, or Jewish immigrant 
 works six days and saves the wages of three because 
 the future is vivid to his imagination. With similar 
 necessities one is ambitious, the other is content. 
 
 The scope and possibility of evoking ambition 
 depend upon the institution of private property. 
 Property in human beings suppresses it, unless occa- 
 sionally a slave is permitted to purchase his freedom. 
 The wage system evokes ambition if the way is open 
 for promotion or for escape by becoming an owner. 
 Tenancy is on a still higher level, but most of all, 
 for the masses of men, the ownership of his own small 
 property is the keenest spur to ambition, for it re- 
 wards the worker with all of his product. This motive 
 is the surest test of an individual's or a race's future. 
 Compare the negro and the Italian cotton grower as 
 tenants in the new vocation opening up to the latter. 
 " It is always difficult," says the observant planter, Mr. 
 Stone,* "to get a negro to plant and properly cultivate 
 the outer edges of his field — the extreme ends of his 
 rows, his ditch banks, etc. The Italian is so jealous 
 of the use of every foot for which he pays rent that 
 he will cultivate with a hoe places too small to be 
 » "The Italian Cotton Grower," p. 45. 
 147 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 worked with a plough, and derive a revenue from spots 
 to which a negro would not give a moment's thought. 
 I have seen them cultivate right down to the water's 
 edge the banks of bayous that had never been touched 
 by the plough. I have seen them walk through their 
 fields and search out every skipped place in every row 
 and carefully put in seed to secure a perfect stand. 
 I have seen them make more cotton per acre than 
 the negro on the adjoining cut, gather it from two to 
 four weeks earlier, and then put in the extra time 
 earning money by picking in the negro's field." 
 
 But ambition has its penalty. It is equivalent to 
 an increase in the supply of labor. As an ambitious 
 proprietor the increase goes into his permanent 
 property, but the ambitious wage-earner accepts a 
 lower rate of pay. His fellows see the reduction and 
 go still lower. The see-saw continues until wages 
 reach the level of necessities, and there is nothing 
 left for ambition. The Jewish sweat-shop is the tragic 
 penalty paid by that ambitious race. In the Illinois 
 coal mines the wages were reduced one-third during 
 twelve years of Italian and Slav immigration. The 
 ambitious races are the industrial races. But their 
 ambition and their industry bring the momentous 
 problem of destructive competition. It might seem 
 that this evil would correct itself — that an increase 
 in the products of one industry would be offset by an 
 increase in other industries; that therefore the in- 
 creased supply in one would not be forced upon the 
 market at lower prices, but would be exchanged on 
 1 48 
 
LABOR 
 
 the same terms as before for the increased supply- 
 in others. This is indeed the case in prosperous 
 times. All industries advance together, and the in- 
 creasing supply of one is merely an increasing de- 
 mand for others. But for some reason, industries 
 do not always harmoniously advance together. And 
 when the disproportion appears, the workers who are 
 blindly but ambitiously pushing ahead endeavor 
 to overcome, by increasing the quantity of output, 
 what they lose by reducing the price. There is but 
 one immediate and practical remedy — the organiza- 
 tion of labor to regulate competition. The method 
 of organization is to do in concert through self- 
 sacrifice what the non-industrial races do individually 
 for self-indulgence ; namely, refuse to work. Where 
 the one loafs the other strikes. While the necessities 
 of the workers set the minimum below which wages 
 cannot fall, and their physical endurance sets the 
 maximum hours beyond which they cannot work, 
 the labor-union, by means of the strike or the threat 
 to strike, sets a higher minimum of wages and a lower 
 maximiun of hours, which leaves room for ambition. 
 Eventually the higher wage and the shorter hours 
 become habitual and become a higher level of neces- 
 sities. Gifted individuals may, indeed, rise above 
 the wage-earning class by their own efforts, but labor 
 organization alone can raise the class as a whole. 
 
 The organization of workmen in labor unions has 
 been more difficult in this than in other free coun- 
 tries, owing to the competition of races. Heretofore it 
 149 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 has been the easiest possible matter for a manager, 
 apprehensive of agitators in forming a union, to 
 introduce a new race and a new language into his 
 works. Indeed, almost the only device and symptom 
 of originality displayed by American employers in 
 disciplining their labor force has been that of playing 
 one race against another. They have, as a rule, been 
 weak in methods of conciliation and feelings of con- 
 sideration for their employees, as well as in the means 
 of safeguarding life and health, but they have been 
 strong with the weapon "divide and conquer." 
 The number of races they have drawn upon is often 
 amazing. The anthracite mine workers comprise 
 nineteen languages and dialects. The employees 
 of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company belong to 
 thirty-two nationalities and speak twenty-seven lan- 
 guages. Such a medley of races offers indeed a dis- 
 heartening prospect to the union organizer. And 
 therefore when these races finally organize, the 
 change in their moral character must be looked upon 
 as the most significant of the social and industrial 
 revolutions of our time. The United Mine Workers 
 of America, with 300,000 members, is very largely 
 composed of recent immigrants from Southern and 
 Eastern Europe. So with the Longshoremen, the 
 United Garment Workers, and the Butcher Work- 
 men. These are or have been among the strongest 
 and best disciplined of American labor-unions. The 
 newest races of the past twenty years have been com- 
 ing long enough to have members who speak the 
 
LABOR 
 
 English language and act as interpreters and leaders, 
 and this is essential where the speeches at a union 
 meeting must be translated often into four or five 
 languages before the subject can be voted upon. 
 Furthermore, the recruiting area for new races has 
 been nearly exhausted, and the races now coming 
 find their fellow-countrymen already in the unions. 
 In the anthracite coal field I saw a dozen Slovaks 
 just arrived from Hungary, but persuaded by their 
 unionized precursors not to take the places of strikers. 
 In New York a shipload of Italians in time of strike 
 has been taken directly into the union. Such a sight 
 would have been vmlikely a dozen years ago. 
 
 The competition of races is the competition of 
 standards of living. The reason the Chinaman or 
 the Italian can save three days' wages is because 
 wages have been previously fixed by the greater 
 necessities of more advanced races. But competition 
 has no respect for superior races. The race with 
 lowest necessities displaces others. The cotton tex- 
 tile industry of New England was originally operated 
 by the educated sons and daughters of American 
 stock. The Irish displaced many of them, then the 
 French Canadians completed the displacement; then, 
 when the children of the French had begun to acquire 
 a higher standard, contingents of Portuguese, Greeks, 
 Syrians, Poles, and Italians entered to prevent a rise, 
 and latterly the Scotch-Irish from the Appalachian 
 Mountains came down to the valleys of the South, 
 and with their low wages, long hours, an(i child 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 labor, set another brake on the standard of living. 
 Lastly, Italians are beginning to be imported to sup- 
 plement the " poor whites." Branches of the cloth- 
 ing industry in New York began with English and 
 Scotch tailors, were then captured by Irish and Ger- 
 mans, then by Russian Jews, and lastly by Italians, 
 while in Boston the Portuguese took a share, and in 
 Chicago the Poles, Bohemians, and Scandinavians. 
 Almost every great manufacturing and mining indus- 
 try has experienced a similar substitution of races. 
 As rapidly as a race rises in the scale of living, and 
 through organization begins to demand higher wages 
 and resist the pressure of long hours and overexertion, 
 the employers substitute another race and the process 
 is repeated. Each race comes from a country lower 
 in the scale than that of the preceding, until finally 
 the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the 
 search for low standards of living combined with 
 patient industriousness. Europe has been exhausted, 
 Asia has been drawn upon, and there remain but 
 three regions of the temperate zones from which a 
 still lower standard can be expected. These are 
 China, Japan, and India. The Chinese have been 
 excluded by law, the Japanese and Koreans are com- 
 ing in increasing numbers, and the Indian coolies 
 remain to be experimented upon. That employers 
 will make strenuous efforts to bring in these last 
 remaining races in the progressive decline of stand- 
 ards, to repeal the Chinese prohibitive laws and to 
 prevent additions to these laws, naturally follows 
 
LABOR 
 
 from the progress toward higher standards and labor 
 organization already made by the Italian and the 
 Slav. 
 
 The trade-union is often represented as an im- 
 ported and un-American institution. It is true that 
 in some imions the main strength is in the English 
 workmen. But the majority of unionists are immi- 
 grants and children of immigrants from countries 
 that know little of unionism. Ireland and Italy 
 have nothing to compare with the trade-union move- 
 ment of England, but the Irish are the most effective 
 organizers of the American unions, and the Italians 
 are becoming the most ardent unionists. Most re- 
 markable of all, the individualistic Jew from Russia, 
 contrary to his race instinct, is joining the unions. 
 The American unions, in fact, grow out of American 
 conditions, and are an American product. Al- 
 though wages are two or three times as high as in his 
 European home, the immigrant is driven by compe- 
 tition and the pressure of employers into a physical 
 exertion which compels him to raise his standard of 
 living in order to have strength to keep at work. 
 He finds also that the law forbids his children to 
 work, and compels him to send them to school. To 
 maintain a higher standard and to support his chil- 
 dren he must earn more wages. This he can do in no 
 other way than by organizing a union. The move- 
 ment is of course aided by Enghsh-speaking out- 
 siders or "agitators," especially by the Irish, but it 
 finds a prompt response in the necessities of the 
 153 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 recruits. Labor organization is essentially the out- 
 come of American freedom, both as a corrective to 
 the evils of free competition and as an exercise of the 
 privilege of free association. 
 
 When once moved by the spirit of imionism, the 
 immigrants from low-standard countries are the most 
 dangerous and determined of imionists. They have 
 no obligations, little property, and but meagre neces- 
 sities that compel them to yield. The bituminous coal 
 miners were on strike four months in 1897 and the 
 anthracite mine workers five months in 1902. Un- 
 ionism comes to them as a discovery and a revelation. 
 Suddenly to find that men of other races whom they 
 have hated are really brothers, and that their enmity 
 has been encouraged for the profit of a common 
 oppressor, is the most profound awakening of which 
 they are capable. Their resentment toward em- 
 ployers who have kept them apart, their devotion to 
 their new-found brothers, are terrible and pathetic. 
 With their emotional temperament, unionism becomes 
 not merely a fight for wages but a religious crusade. 
 It is in the nature of retribution that, after bringing 
 to this country all the industrial races of Europe and 
 Asia in the effort to break down labor organizations, 
 these races should so soon have wiped out race an- 
 tagonism and, joining together in the most powerful 
 of labor-unions, have wrenched from their employers 
 the greatest advances in wages. 
 
 There is but one thing that stands in the way of 
 complete unionization in many of the industries; 
 154 
 
Governor Johnson 
 OF Minnesota. — Swede 
 (From The World To-Day) 
 
LABOR 
 
 namely, a flood of immigration too great for assimila- 
 tion. With nearly a million immigrants a year the 
 pressure upon unions seems almost resistless. A 
 few of the unions which control the trade, like the 
 mine workers and longshoremen, with high initiation 
 fees and severe terms of admission, are able to 
 protect themselves by virtue of strength already 
 gained. But in the coast states and on miscel- 
 laneous labor this strategic advantage does not 
 exist, and the standards are set by the newest im- 
 migrants. 
 
 Profits and Wages. — We have now stated at 
 some length in this and the preceding chapter 
 the two standpoints from which the immigration 
 of industrial races is viewed. One standpoint 
 is that of the production of wealth, the other the 
 distribution of wealth. One is the development 
 of our natural resources, the other is the ele- 
 vation of our working population. If we inquire 
 somewhat more critically and take into account all 
 of the circumstances, we shall find that the motives 
 animating this difference of policy are not really the 
 above distinction between production and distribu- 
 tion, but the distinction between two opposing inter- 
 ests in distribution ; namely, profits and wages. Un- 
 fortunately it is too readily assumed that whatever 
 increases profits does so by increasing production. 
 As a matter of fact it is only secondarily the produc- 
 tion of wealth and development of resources that 
 is sought by one of the interests concerned — it i^ 
 15s 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 primarily increase of profits at the expense of wages. 
 Cheap labor, it is asserted, is needed to develop the 
 less productive resources of the country — what the 
 economists call the margin of production. It is 
 needed to develop the less productive industries, 
 like sugar beet, and the less productive branches of 
 other industries, like the construction of railways in 
 undeveloped regions or the reconstruction of rail- 
 ways in older regions, or the extension of a coal mine 
 into the narrow veins, and so on. Without cheap 
 labor these marginal resources, it is asserted, could 
 not profitably be exploited, and would therefore not 
 be developed. 
 
 This argument, within limits, is undoubtedly true, 
 but it overlooks the part played by machinery and 
 inventions where wages are high. The cigar-mak- 
 ing machine cannot extensively be introduced on the 
 Pacific coast because Chinese cheap labor makes the 
 same cigars at less cost than the machines. High 
 wages stimulate the invention and use of machinery 
 and scientific processes, and it is machinery and 
 science, more than mere hand labor, on which reli- 
 ance must be placed to develop the natural resources 
 of a country. 
 
 But machinery and science cannot be as quickly 
 introduced as cheap immigrant labor. Machinery 
 requires accumulation of capital in advance of pro- 
 duction, but labor requires only the payment of daily 
 wages in the course of production. Consequently in 
 the haste to get profits the immigrant is more desired 
 156 
 
LABOR 
 
 than machinery. But excessive profits secured in 
 this way bring reaction and a period of business 
 depression which check the production of weahh 
 even more than the period of prosperity has stimu- 
 lated production. Consider the extreme vacillations 
 of prosperity and depression which characterize 
 American industry. In a period of prosperity the 
 prices of commodities rise rapidly, but the wages of 
 labor, especially vmorganized labor, follow slowly, 
 and do not rise proportionately as high as prices. 
 This means an enormous increase in profits and pro- 
 duction of commodities. But commodities are pro- 
 duced to be sold, and if the market falls off, then 
 production comes to a standstill with what is known 
 as "overproduction." Now, wage-earners are the 
 mass of consumers. If their wages do not rise in pro- 
 portion to prices and profits, they cannot purchase as 
 large a proportion of the country's products as they 
 did before the period of prosperity began. " Over- 
 production" is mainly the "underconsumption" 
 of wage-earners. Immigration intensifies this fatal 
 cycle of "booms" and "depressions." A natural 
 increase in population by excess of births over deaths, 
 continues at practically the same rate year after year, 
 in good times and bad times, but an artificial increase 
 through immigration falls off in hard times and be- 
 comes excessive in good times. Thus, in 1879, at 
 the lowest point of depression, the number of immi- 
 grants was 177,826, but three years later, in the 
 "boom" culminating in 1882, it rose to 788,992. 
 157 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 In nine years following the depression of 1897 the 
 number increased from 230,000 to 1,100,000. 
 
 Even this does not tell the story complete, for the 
 effects of free immigration are intensified by the 
 opposite policy of a protective tariff on imports. 
 While labor is admitted practically free, the products 
 of labor are taxed to prevent free ingress. The fol- 
 lowing table shows the extreme points in the rise 
 and fall of immigration and imports: — 
 
 CULMINATING POINTS OF IMMIGRATION AND 
 
 IMPORTS OF MERCHANDISE 
 
 
 Immigration 
 
 Imports 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 June 30 
 
 Prosperity 
 
 Depres- 
 sion 
 
 Prosperity 
 
 Depression 
 
 1873 
 
 459.803 
 
 
 $ 642,000,000 
 
 
 1879 and 1878* 
 
 
 177,826 
 
 
 $437,000,000 
 
 1882 
 
 788,992 
 
 
 725,000,000 
 
 
 1886 and i88s ' 
 
 
 334.203 
 
 
 578,000,000 
 
 1893 
 
 439.37° 
 
 
 866,000,000 
 
 
 1897 and 1898 ' 
 
 
 230,832 
 
 
 616,000,000 
 
 1906 
 
 1, 100, 735 
 
 
 1,226,000,000 
 
 
 By comparing the two sets of columns it will be 
 seen that, owing to the protective tariff, the imports 
 of merchandise vary but slightly in periods of pros- 
 perity and depression compared with the variation in 
 number of immigrants. Thus in the recent period 
 of prosperity, the imports increased twofold above 
 the lowest point of the preceding depression, while the 
 number of immigrants increased nearly fivefold. 
 
 ' Where two years are given, the fiist is for Immigration and the 
 second for Imports. 
 
 158 
 
LABOR 
 
 The swell of immigration in the above-mentioned 
 periods of prosperity increases the supply of labor, 
 but the protective tariff prevents a similar increase in 
 the supply of products. Thus immigration and the 
 tariff together prevent wages from rising with the rise 
 in prices of commodities and cost of living. This 
 permits profits to increase more than wages, to be 
 followed by overproduction and stoppage of business. 
 
 Furthermore, when once the flow of immigrants is 
 stimulated it continues for some time after the pin- 
 nacle of prosperity has been reached. In 1903 the 
 boom met a check at the beginning of the year, but 
 the number of immigrants continued to increase dur- 
 ing the summer and fall at the rate of 20,000 per 
 month in excess of the number during the high period 
 of prosperity in 1902. This makes it possible for 
 great corporations to continue their investments 
 by means of cheap labor beyond the probable de- 
 mands of the country, with the result of overpro- 
 duction, loss of profits, inability to pay fixed charges, 
 and consequent panics. Thus it is that immigra- 
 tion, instead of increasing the production of wealth 
 by a steady, healthful growth, joins with other causes 
 to stimulate the feverish overproduction, with its in- 
 evitable collapse, that has characterized the industry 
 of America more than that of any other country. 
 It helps to create fortunes during a period of specula- 
 tion, and intensifies the reaction during a period of 
 stagnation. 
 
 159 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 Statistics are considered by many people as dry 
 and uninteresting, and the fact that a book is statis- 
 tical is a warning that it should not be read, or that 
 the statistical paragraphs should be passed over for 
 the narrative and historical parts. This is a dilettante 
 and lazy attitude to take, and especially so in the 
 study of social subjects, for in these subjects it is only 
 statistics that tell us the true proportions and relative 
 importance of our facts. The study of statistics 
 leads us to a study of social causes and forces, and 
 when we see that in the year 1790 three per cent of 
 our population lived in cities, and in the year 1900 
 thirty-three per cent lived in cities of 8000 popula- 
 tion and over, we are aroused to the importance of 
 making a serious inquiry into the reasons for this 
 growth of cities and the effects of city life on the 
 future of democracy and the welfare of the nation. 
 More impressive to the student of race problems 
 becomes the inquiry when we realize that while 
 one-fifth of our entire population lives in the thirty- 
 eight cities of over 100,000 population, two-fifths of 
 our foreign-bom population, one-third of our native 
 offspring of foreign parents, and only one-tenth of our 
 
 160 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 people of native parentage live in such cities. That is 
 to say, the proportion of the foreign-bom in great 
 cities is four times as great, and the proportion of the 
 children of foreign parents is three and one-third 
 times as great as that of the colonial and older native 
 stock. These proportions appear in the accom- 
 panying table and the upper diagram on page 162. 
 
 POPULATION IN THE XJNITED STATES AND LARGE 
 CITIES: 1900 
 
 
 In United States 
 
 In 38 Cities of ioo,cx» 
 Population and Over 
 
 Total fok United States 
 
 Number 
 
 Per 
 cent 
 
 Number 
 
 Per cent of 
 total of cor- 
 responding 
 class 
 
 Population 
 
 Native white, native par- 
 ents 
 
 Native white, foreign par- 
 ents 
 
 Foreign white 
 
 Negroes 
 
 Indian and Mongolians 
 
 75,994,575 
 40,958,216 
 
 15,637,063 
 
 10,213,817 
 
 8,833,994 
 
 351,385 
 
 loo.o 
 
 53-9 
 
 20.6 
 
 13-4 
 11.6 
 
 •5 
 
 14,208,347 
 
 4,245,817 
 
 5,280,186 
 
 3,972,324 
 
 668,324 
 
 32,696 
 
 18.7 
 10.3 
 
 33-2 
 
 39-7 
 
 7.6 
 
 9-3 
 
 If we present the matter in another form in order 
 to show the full extent of foreign influence in our great 
 cities, we have another diagram, which shows that 
 59 per cent of the population outside, and only 30 
 per cent of the population within these cities is of 
 native parentage, while 27 per cent of the population 
 outside, and 65 per cent of the population within 
 these cities is of foreign parentage. The census 
 enumeration carries us back only to the parents, but 
 if we had knowledge of the grandparents we should 
 M 161 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 NjmVE^VHlTE 
 tIAXIYBPARENtS 
 
 IN 
 
 :niES 
 
 DP 
 
 0401 
 
 NATIVE YfHITE 
 FOREIOM PARENIS 
 
 INQTIESOF 
 I00.00O 
 
 FOREIGN YVHIIH 
 
 IN CITIES OF 
 lOO.OOO 
 
 COLORED 
 
 M 
 
 Distribution of Population : 1900 
 
 ISSSi! 
 
 NAUVE PARENXAfiE 
 
 iwnyB 
 
 Bnorr- 
 
 nWENT- 
 
 fOREIGHPAREinAGE 
 
 COLORED 
 
 Percentage of Population in Cities : 1900 
 
 162 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 probably find that the immigrant element of the 
 nineteenth century contributed a goodly portion of 
 those set down as of native parentage. 
 
 CONSTTTUENTS OTTHEPOPUUWION OV CITIES OF 
 MORE THAN 100,000 INHABITANTS i 1900 
 
 ^:->>-3 Win yrblxt ofwativa pwnte ^^ KMhtvoWto of faral^f«Mi\t« g==} Bifri^^-w^ute 
 
 163 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Still more significant becomes the comparison when 
 we take each of these cities separately, as is done in 
 the chart reproduced on page 163 from the Statistical 
 Atlas of the Twelfth Census. 
 
 Here it appears that the extreme is reached in the 
 textile manufacturing city of Fall River, where but 
 14 per cent of the population is of native extrac- 
 tion, while in the two greatest cities, New York and 
 Chicago, the proportion is 21 per cent, and the only 
 large cities with a predominance of the native ele- 
 ment are St. Joseph, Columbus, Indianapolis, and 
 Kansas City, with Denver equally divided. As 
 already stated, grandparents would still further 
 diminish the proportion of native element. 
 
 If we carry our comparison down to the 160 cities 
 of 25,000 population, we shall find that in such cities 
 is one-haK of the foreign-bom population,' and we 
 shall also see marked dififerences among the races. 
 At one extreme, three-fourths of those bom in 
 Russia, mainly Jews, live in these principal cities, 
 and at the other extreme, one-fifth of the Nor- 
 wegians. 
 
 The other Scandinavian countries and the Welsh 
 and Swiss have about one-third, while the English 
 and Scotch are two-fifths, Germany, Austria, Bo- 
 hemia, and Poland, one-half to three-fifths, Ireland 
 and Italy nearly two-thirds. 
 
 Individual cities suggest striking comparisons. In 
 New York, computations based on the census show 
 
 ' Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. clxxvi. 
 164 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 785,035 persons of German descent, a number nearly 
 equal to the population of Hamburg, and larger than 
 the native element in New York (737,477). New 
 York has twice as many Irish (710,510) as Dublin, 
 two and one-half times as many Jews as Warsaw, 
 half as many ItaUans as Naples, and 50,000 to 
 150,000 first and second generations from Scotland, 
 Hungary, Poland, Austria, and England.* Chicago 
 has nearly as many Germans as Dresden, one-third 
 as many Bohemians as Prague, one-half as many 
 Irish as Belfast, one-half as many Scandinavians as 
 Stockhohn.=' 
 
 The variety of races, too, is astonishing. New 
 York excels Babel. A newspaper writer finds in 
 that city sixty-six languages spoken, forty-nine news- 
 papers published in foreign languages, and one school 
 at Mulberry Bend with children of twenty-nine 
 nationaUties. Several of the smaller groups hve in 
 colonies, like the Syrians, Greeks, and Chinese. But 
 the colonies of the larger groups are reservoirs per- 
 petually filling and flowing.' 
 
 The influx of population to our cities, the most 
 characteristic and significant movement of the pres- 
 ent generation, has additional significance when we 
 classify it according to the motives of those who seek 
 the cities, whether industrial or parasitic. The 
 transformation from agriculture to manufactures and 
 
 * See Federation, June 1902, p. 40. 
 ' Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. 878-881. 
 ' New York Sun, Nov. 29, 1903. 
 
 16S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 transportation has designated city occupations as the 
 opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation 
 of wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious, 
 and educated classes congregate. From the farms 
 of the American stock the sons leave a humdrum 
 existence for the uncertaia but magnificent rewards 
 of industrialism. These become the business men, 
 the heads of great enterprises, and the millionaires 
 whose example hypnotizes the imagination of the farm 
 lads throughout the land. Many of them find their 
 level in clerical and professional occupations, but they 
 escape the manual toil which to them is the token 
 of subordination. These manual portions are the 
 peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and 
 foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the 
 farms of Europe to the cities of America. The high 
 wages of the industries and occupations which radiate 
 from American cities are to them the magnet which 
 fortune-seeking is to the American-born. The 
 cities, too, furnish that choice of employers and that 
 easy reliance on charitable and friendly assistance 
 which is so necessary to the indigent laborer look- 
 ing for work. Thus it is that those races of immi- 
 grants the least self-reliant or forehanded, like the 
 Irish and the Italians, seek the cities in greater pro- 
 portions than those sturdy races hke the Scandina- 
 vians, English, Scotch, and Germans. The Jew, 
 also, coming from the cities of Europe, seeks Amer- 
 ican cities by the very reason of his racial distaste for 
 agriculture, and he finds there in his coreligionists 
 i66 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 the necessary assistance for a beginning in American 
 livelihood. 
 
 At this point we gradually pass over from the 
 industrial motives of city influx to the parasitic 
 motives. The United Hebrew Charities of New 
 York have asserted that one-fourth of the Jews of 
 that city are apphcants for charity, and the other 
 charitable societies make similar estimates for the 
 population at large. These estimates must certainly 
 be exaggerated, and a careful analysis of their methods 
 of keeping statistics will surely moderate such star- 
 tling statements, but we must accept them as the judg- 
 ment of those who have the best means of knowing 
 the conditions of poverty and pauperism in the me- 
 tropolis. However exaggerated, they indicate an 
 alarming extent of abject penury brought on by 
 immigration, for it is mainly the immigrant and the 
 children of the immigrant who swell the ranks of 
 this indigent element in our great cities. 
 
 Those who are poverty-stricken are not necessarily 
 parasitic, but they occupy that intermediate stage 
 between the industrial and the parasitic classes from 
 which either of these classes may be recruited. If 
 through continued poverty they become truly parasitic, 
 then they pass over to the ranks of the criminal, the 
 pauper, the vicious, the indolent, and the vagrant, who, 
 like the industrial class, seek the cities. 
 
 The dangerous effects of city life on immigrants 
 and the children of immigrants cannot be too strongly 
 emphasized. This coimtry can absorb millions of all 
 167 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 races from Europe and can raise them and their 
 descendants to relatively high standards of American 
 citizenship in so far as it can find places for them on 
 the farms. "The land has been our great solvent." ' 
 But the cities of this country not only do not raise 
 the immigrants to the same degree of independence, 
 but are themselves dragged down by the parasitic 
 and dependent conditions which they foster among 
 the immigrant element. 
 
 Crime. — This fact is substantiated by a study of 
 criminal and pauper statistics. Great caution is 
 needed in this line of inquiry, especially since the 
 eleventh census in 1890 promulgated most erroneous 
 inferences from the statistics compiled under its 
 direction. It was contended by the census authori- 
 ties that for each million of the foreign-bom popula- 
 tion there were 1768 prisoners, while for each million 
 of the native-bom there were only 898 prisoners, thus 
 showing a tendency to criminality of the foreign-bom 
 twice as great as that of the white native-bom. This 
 inference was possible through oversight of the im- 
 portant fact that prisoners are recruited mainly from 
 adults, and that the proportion of foreign-bom adults 
 to the foreign-bom population is much greater than 
 that of the native-bom adults to the native population. 
 If comparison be made of the number of male pris- 
 oners with the number of males of voting age, the pro- 
 portions are materially different and more accurate, 
 as follows : — 
 
 • Semple, 312. 
 I68 
 
Dr. Oronhyatekha 
 Mohawk Indian, Late Chief of Order of Foresters 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 Number of Male Prisoners per Million of Voting 
 Population, 1890 (Omitting "Unknown")' 
 
 Native white, native parents 3i39S 
 
 Native white, foreign parents 5,886 
 
 Native white, total 3,482 ' 
 
 Foreign white 3,270 
 
 Negro 13.219 
 
 Here the foreign-bom show actually a lower rate 
 of criminality (3270) than the total native-born 
 (3482). This inference harmonizes with our gen- 
 eral observations of the immigrants, namely, that 
 they belong to the industrial classes, and that our 
 immigration laws are designed to exclude criminals. 
 
 But this analysis brings out a fact far more sig- 
 nificant than any yet adverted to ; namely, that the 
 native-bom children of immigrants show a propor- 
 tion of criminality (5886 per million) much greater 
 than that of the foreign-bom themselves (3270 per 
 million), and 70 per cent greater than that of the 
 children of native parents. 
 
 This significant fact is further brought out, and 
 with it the obverse of the census mistake above re- 
 ferred to, when we examine the census inferences 
 respecting juvenile criminals. The census calcula- 
 tions show that there are 250 juvenile offenders for 
 every million of the native-bom population, and only 
 159 such offenders for every million of the foreign- 
 bom population ; but if we remember that the pro- 
 portion of foreign-bom children is small, and then 
 
 ' Prisoners having one parent foreign are apportioned in the 
 ratio of native and foreign parentage. 
 
 ' Includes native-bom, parentage unknown. 
 169 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 proceed to compare the number of boys who are 
 offenders with the number of boys lo to 19 years of 
 age rather than with the number of persons of all 
 ages, we shall have the following results, confining 
 our attention to the North Atlantic states, where 
 juvenile reformatories are more liberally provided 
 than in other sections: — 
 
 Male Juvenile Offenders per Million of Male Popula- 
 tion Ten To Nineteen Years of Age, North Atlantic 
 States, 1890(0111110*0 "Unknown")' 
 
 Native white, native parents i,744 
 
 Native white, foreign parents 3>923 
 
 Foreign white 3)3i6 
 
 Colored i7,9iS 
 
 This table throws a different light on the situation, . 
 for it shows that the tendency towards crime among 
 juveniles, instead of being less for the foreign-bom 
 than for the native-bom, is nearly twice as great as 
 that of the children of American parentage, and that 
 the tendency among native children of foreign par- 
 entage (3923 per million) is more than twice as great 
 as that among children of American parents (1744 
 per million). 
 
 This amazing criminality of the children of immi- 
 grants is ahnost wholly a product of city life, and it 
 follows directly upon the incapacity of immigrant 
 parents to control their children under city conditions. 
 The boys, especially, at an early age lose respect for 
 their parents, who cannot talk the language of the 
 
 ' Offenders having one parent foreign are apportioned in the 
 ratio of native and foreign parentage. 
 170 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 . community, and who are ignorant and helpless in the 
 whirl of the struggle for existence, and are shut up 
 during the daytime in shops and factories. On the 
 streets and alleys, in their gangs and in the schools, 
 the children evade parental discipline, and for them 
 the home is practically non-existent. Says a well- 
 informed student of race problems in New York,* 
 " Example after example might be given of tenement- 
 house families in which the parents — industrious 
 peasant laborers — have f oimd themselves disgraced 
 by idle and vicious grown sons and daughters. Cases 
 taken from the records of charitable societies almost 
 at random show these facts again and again." 
 Even the Russian Jew, more devoted and self-sac- 
 rificing in the training of his children than any other 
 race of immigrants, sees them soon earning more 
 money than their parents and breaking away from 
 the discipline of centuries. 
 
 Far different is it with those foreigners who settle 
 in country districts where their children are under 
 their constant oversight, and while the youngsters 
 are learning the ways of America they are also held 
 by their parents to industrious habits. Children of 
 such immigrants become substantial citizens, while 
 children of the same race brought up in the cities 
 become a recruiting constituency for hoodlums, 
 vagabonds, and criminals. 
 
 The reader must have observed in the preceding 
 
 ' Kate HoUaday Claghorn, "The Tenement House Problem," 
 Vol. II, p. 79. 
 
 171 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 statistical estimates the startling preeminence of the 
 negro in the ranks of criminals. His proportion of 
 prisoners for adult males (13,219 per million) seems 
 to be four times as great as that of the native stock, 
 and more than twice as great as that of foreign par- 
 entage, while for boys his portion in the North Atlan- 
 tic states (17,915 per million) is ten times as great 
 as that of the corresponding native stock, and four 
 times as great as that of foreign parentage. 
 
 The negro perhaps suffers by way of discrimina- 
 tion in the number of arrests and convictions com- 
 pared with the whites, yet it is significant that in pro- 
 portion to total numbers the negro prisoners in the 
 Northern states are nearly twice as many as in the 
 Southern states. Here, again, city life works its 
 degenerating effects, for the Northern negroes are 
 congregated mainly in towns and cities, while the 
 Southern negroes remain in the country. 
 
 Did space permit, it would prove an interesting 
 quest to follow the several races through the various 
 classes of crime, noticing the relative seriousness of 
 their offences, and paying attention to the female 
 offenders. Only one class of offences can here be 
 noted in detail ; namely, that of public intoxication. 
 Although classed as a crime, this offence borders on 
 pauperism and the mental diseases, and its extreme 
 prevalence indicates that the race in question is not 
 overcoming the degenerating effects of competition 
 and city life. Statistics from Massachusetts seem to 
 show that drunkenness prevails to the greatest extent 
 172 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 in the order of preeminence among the Irish, Welsh, 
 English, and Scotch, and least among the Portuguese, 
 Italians, Germans, Poles, and Jews. The Italians owe 
 their prominence in the lists of prisoners to their 
 crimes of violence, and very slightly to intoxication, 
 though the latter is increasing among them. In the 
 Southern states the ravages of drink among the ne- 
 groes have been so severe and accompanied with such 
 outbreaks of violence that the poUcy of prohibition 
 of the liquor traffic has been carried farther than in 
 any other section of the country. Probably three- 
 fourths of the Southern negroes live in prohibition 
 counties, and were it not for the paternal restrictions 
 imposed by such laws, the downward course of the 
 negro race would doubtless have outrun considerably 
 the speed it has actually attained. 
 
 Besides the crimes which spring from racial ten- 
 dencies, there is a peculiar class of crimes springing 
 largely from race prejudice and hatred. These are 
 lynchings and mob violence. The United States 
 presents the paradox of a nation where respect for 
 law and constitutional forms has won most signal 
 triumphs, yet where concerted violations of law 
 have been most widespread. By a queer inversion of 
 thought, a crime committed jointly by many is not a 
 crime, but a vindication of justice, just as a crime com- 
 mitted by authority of a nation is not a crime, but a 
 virtue. Such crimes have not been continuous, but 
 have arisen at times out of acute racial antagonisms. 
 The Knownothing agitation of 1850 to 1855, which 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 prevailed among religious and patriotic Americans, 
 was directed against the newly arrived flood of immi- 
 grants from Europe and Asia, and was marked by a 
 state of lawlessness and mob rule such as had never 
 before existed, especially in the cities of Boston, New 
 York, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Balti- 
 more.' These subsided or changed their object under 
 the oncoming slavery crisis, and the Civil War itself 
 was a grand resort to violence by the South on a ques- 
 tion of race domination. Beginning again with the 
 Kuklux and White-cap uprisings in the seventies, 
 mob rule drove the negroes back to a condition of 
 subordination, but the lawless spirit then engendered 
 has continued to show itself in the annual lynching 
 of fifty to one hundred and fifty negroes suspected 
 or convicted of the more heinous crimes.^ Nor has 
 this crime of the mob been restricted to the South, but 
 it has spread to the North, and has become almost 
 the accepted code of procedure throughout the land 
 wherever negroes are heinously accused. In the 
 Northern instances this vengeance of the mob is some- 
 times wreaked on the entire race, for in the North 
 the negro is more assertive, and defends his accused 
 brother. But in the South the mob usually, though 
 not always, stops with vengeance on the individual 
 guilty, or supposedly guilty, since the race in general is 
 already cowed. 
 
 'John B. McMaster, "The Riotous Career of the Know- 
 nothings," Forum, July, 1894, p. 524. 
 
 'Cutler, "Lynch Law"; Bishop, "'Lynching," International 
 Quarterly, September, 1903. 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 Other races suffer at the hands of mobs, such as the 
 Chinese in Wyoming and California at the hands of 
 American mine workers, Italians in Louisiana and 
 California at the hands of citizens and laborers, 
 Slovaks and Poles in Latimer, Pennsylvania, at the 
 hands of a mob militia. With the rise of organized 
 labor these race riots and mihtia shootings increased 
 in number, often growing out of the efforts of older 
 races of workmen to drive newer and backward 
 races from their jobs, or the efforts of employers to 
 destroy newly formed unions of these immigrant 
 races. Many strikes are accompanied by an in- 
 cipient race war where employers are endeavoring 
 to make substitution, one race for another, of Irish, 
 Germans, native whites, Italians, negroes, Poles, and 
 so on. Even the long series of crimes against the 
 Indians, to which the term "A Century of Dishonor" 
 seems to have attached itself without protest, must 
 be looked upon as the mob spirit of a superior race 
 bent on despoiling a despised and inferior race. That 
 the frenzied spirit of the mob, whether in strikes, 
 panicky militia, Indian slaughter, or civil war, should 
 so often have blackened the face of a nation sincerely 
 dedicated to law and order is one of the penalties 
 paid for experimenting on a problem of political 
 and economic equality with material marked by ex- 
 treme racial inequality. 
 
 Poverty and Pauperism. — Prior to year 1875 the 
 laws of the United States imposed no prohibition 
 upon the immigration of paupers from foreign coun- 
 17s 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 tries, and not until the federal government took from 
 the states the administration of the law in 1891 did 
 the prohibitions of the existing law become reasonably 
 effective. Since that year there have been annually 
 debarred, as likely to become public charges, 431 
 to 7898 arrivals, the latter number being debarred in 
 the year 1905. In addition to those debarred at 
 landing, there have been annually returned within 
 one to three years after landing, 177 to 845 immi- 
 grants, many of whom had meantime become public 
 charges. From these statements it will be seen that, 
 prior to 1891, it was possible and quite probable that 
 many thousand paupers and prospective paupers 
 were admitted by the immigration authorities, and 
 consequently the proportion of paupers among the 
 foreign-born should appear larger than it would in 
 later years. In the earlier years systematic arrange- 
 ments were in force in foreign countries, especially 
 Great Britain, to assist in the deportation of paupers 
 to the United States, and therefore it is not surprising 
 that, apart from race characteristics, there should have 
 come to this country larger numbers of Irish paupers 
 than those from any other nationality. Since these 
 exportations have been stopped, it is not so much 
 the actual pauper as the prospective pauper who 
 gets admission. 96 per cent of the paupers in 
 almshouses have been in this country ten years or 
 more, showing that the exclusion laws are still defec- 
 tive, in that large numbers of poor physique are ad- 
 mitted. Taking the census reports for 1904, and con- 
 176 
 
CITY LIFE, CRIME, AND POVERTY 
 
 fining our attention to the North Atlantic states, 
 where children are generally provided for in separate 
 estabUshments, we are able to compute the following 
 as the relative extent of pauperism among males: — 
 
 Male Paupers in Almshottses Per Million Voting Popu- 
 lation, North Atlantic States, 1904. 
 
 Native white, native parents 2,360 
 
 Native wMte, foreign parents 2,25^ 
 
 Foreign white S>'i9 
 
 Colored 4,056 
 
 Here we see the counterpart of the estimates on 
 crime, for the natives of foreign parentage show a 
 smaller proportion of paupers than the natives of 
 native parentage, while the foreign-bom themselves 
 show more than double the relative amount of pau- 
 perism of the native element, and the colored pau- 
 pers are nearly twice the native stock. 
 
 The census bureau also furnishes computations 
 showing the contributions of the different races and 
 nationalities to the insane asyliuns and benevolent 
 institutions.^ In general it appears that the foreign- 
 bom and the negroes exceed the native classes in their 
 burden on the public. A report of the Department of 
 Labor of great value and significance, incidentally 
 bearing on this subject, shows for the Itahans in 
 Chicago their industrial and social conditions. 
 According to this report the average eamings of 
 Italians in that city in 1896 while at work were $6.41 
 
 ' Bureau of the Census, Special Reports, "Paupers in Alms- 
 houses, 1904," "Benevolent Institutions, 1904," "Insane and 
 Feeble-minded in Hospitals and Institutions, 1904." 
 
 N 177 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 per week for men and $2.11 per week for women, and 
 the average time unemployed by the wage-earning 
 element was over seven months. In another report 
 of the Department of Labor it appears that the slum 
 population of the cities of Baltimore, Chicago, New 
 York, and Philadelphia in 1893 was unemployed three 
 months each year. With wages one dollar a day, and 
 employment only five months during the year, it is 
 marvellous that the Itahans of Chicago, during the 
 late period of depression, were not thrown in great 
 numbers upon public relief. Yet, with the strict 
 administration of the exclusion laws leading to the 
 deportation of over 2000 Italians a year as liable 
 to become public charges, it is likely that the 
 immigrants of that race, although low in physique, 
 poverty, and standards of living, are fairly well 
 screened of actual paupers. 
 
 178 
 
CHAPTER Vm 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 American democracy was ushered in on a theory 
 of equality. And no word has been more strangely 
 used and abused. There is the monarchical idea 
 of equality, and Mr. Mallock begs the question when 
 he gives the title "Aristocracy and Evolution" to 
 a book on the necessary part played by great men. 
 Doubtless, in Greek, aristocracy means "government 
 by the best," but in history it means government by 
 the privilege of birth and landed property. De- 
 mocracy may be in philology "government by the 
 mob," but in politics and industry it has been oppor- 
 tunity for great men without blood or property. 
 Mr. Miinsterberg, too, sees the breakdown of Ameri- 
 can democracy and the reaction towards aristocracy 
 in the prominence of civil-service reform, the pre- 
 eminence conceded to business ability, the deference 
 to wealth, and the conquest of the Philippines.' 
 But civil-service reform is only a device for opening 
 the door to merit that has been shut by privilege. In 
 England it was the means by which the mercantile 
 classes broke into the offices preempted by the younger 
 
 'Miinsterberg, "American Traits," p. 225 ff. 
 179 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 sons of aristocracy.' In America it is an awkward 
 means of admitting ability wherever f oimd to positions 
 seized upon by political usurpers. It appealed to the 
 American democracy only when its advocates learned 
 to call it, not "civil-service reform," but "the merit 
 system." As for the astonishing power of mere 
 wealth in American affairs the testimony of another 
 English observer is based on wider observation 
 when he says, " Even the tyranny of trusts is not to 
 be compared with the tyranny of landlordism; for 
 the one is felt to be merely an unhappy and (it is 
 hoped) temporary aberration of well-meant social 
 machinery, while the other seems bred in the very 
 bone of the national existence." ^ 
 
 A feeling of disappointment holds true of the con- 
 quest and treatment of the Philippines. That a war 
 waged out of sympathy for an oppressed island near- 
 by should have shaken down an unnoticed archi- 
 pelago across the ocean was taken in childlike glee 
 as the unexpected reward of virtue. But serious 
 thinking has followed on seeing that these islands 
 have added another race problem to the many that 
 have thwarted democracy. Only a plutocracy sprung 
 from race divisions at home could profit by race-sub- 
 jection abroad, and the only alternative to race-sub- 
 jection is equal representation in Congress. But to 
 admit another race to partnership without the hope 
 of assimilation is to reject experience. Independence 
 
 ' Eaton, "The Civil Service in Great Britain," p. i6o ff. 
 'Muirhead, "The Land of Contrasts," p. 274. 
 180 
 
POLITICS 
 
 or cession to Japan is the seK-preservation of Ameri- 
 can democracy. 
 
 Another idea of equality is the socialist idea. In- 
 fatuated by an " economic interpretation of history, " 
 they overlook the racial interpretation. Permitting 
 and encouraging plutocracy, they hope to see the dis- 
 possessed masses take possession when conditions 
 become intolerable. But the "masses" would not 
 be equal to the task. Privileged wealth knows too 
 well how to buy up or promote their leaders, how to 
 weaken them by internal dissensions, how to set race 
 against race. Most of all, the inexperienced despot- 
 ism of the masses is worse than the smooth despotism 
 of wealth. The government of the South by the 
 negro, the government of San Francisco by "labor," 
 fell into the hands of the "carpet-bagger" and the 
 "boss." Once in power, internal strife and jealousy, 
 struggle for office, or racial antagonism disrupt the 
 rulers, and a reaction throws them back more helpless 
 than before. Men are not equal, neither are races 
 or classes equal. True equality comes through equal 
 opportimity. If individuals go forward, their race 
 or class is elevated. They become spokesmen, de- 
 fenders, examples. No race or class can rise without 
 its own leaders. If they get admitted on equal terms 
 with other leaders, whether it be in the councils 
 of the church, the law-making bodies of the city, 
 state, and nation, or the wage conferences of em- 
 ployers, they then can command the hearing which 
 their abilities justify. They secure for their fol- 
 i3l 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 lowers the equal opportunity to which they are en- 
 titled. 
 
 This is exactly the political problem that grows out 
 of the presence of races and immigrants. With these 
 admitted to the suffrage on the basis of mere manhood 
 inspired by a generosity unknown to the people of any 
 other land, the machinery of representative govern- 
 ment inherited from England does not, for some rea- 
 son, permit the free choice of leaders. The difficul- 
 ties may be seen in cities where the system first broke 
 down. A variety of races and nationalities living 
 in the same ward are asked to elect aldermen and 
 other officers by majority vote. No one nationality 
 has a majority, but each sets up its list of candidates. 
 The nationahty with a mere plurality elects all of its 
 candidates, and the other nationalities — a majority 
 of the voters — are unrepresented. This is an ex- 
 treme case, and has not often been allowed to happen. 
 But the only means of preventiag it is the "ward boss." 
 The boss emerges from the situation as inevitably 
 as the survival of the fittest. And the fittest is the 
 Irishman. The Irishman has above all races the 
 mixture of ingenuity, firmness, human sympathy, 
 comradeship, and daring that makes him the amal- 
 gamator of races. He conciliates them all by nomi- 
 nating a ticket on which the offices are shrewdly 
 distributed; and out of the Babel his "slate" gets 
 the majority. 
 
 The boss's problem is not an easy one. His ward 
 may contain business men on the hill and negroes 
 182 
 
POLITICS 
 
 along the canal. To nominate a business man would 
 lose the negro vote — to nominate a negro would lose 
 the business vote. He selects a nondescript some- 
 where between, and discards him for another at the 
 next election. The representative becomes a tool 
 in the hands of the boss. The boss sells his 
 power to corporations, franchise speculators, and law- 
 evaders. Representative democracy becomes boss- 
 ocracy in the service of plutocracy. The ward system 
 worked well when the suffrage was limited. Then 
 the business men elected their business man imim- 
 peded. But a system devised for restricted suffrage 
 breaks down under universal suffrage. Could the 
 ward lines be abolished, could the business men come 
 together regardless of residence and elect their choice 
 without the need of a majority vote, could the negroes 
 and other races and classes do the same, then each 
 would be truly represented by their natural leaders. 
 So it is, not only in cities, but in county, state, and 
 nation. Universal suffrage, clannish races, social 
 classes, diversified interests, seem to explain and 
 justify the presence of the party "machine" and its 
 boss. Otherwise races, classes, and interests are in 
 helpless conflict and anarchy. But the true explana- 
 tion is an obsolete ward and district system of plu- 
 rality representation adopted when but one race, class, 
 or interest had the suffrage. Forms of government 
 are the essence of government, notwithstanding the 
 poet. An aristocratic form with a democratic suf- 
 frage 13 a plutocratic government. Belgium and 
 183 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Switzerland have shown that a democratic form is 
 possible and practicable. Proportional representa- 
 tion instead of district representation is the corollary 
 of universal suffrage which those countries have 
 worked out as a model for others.* The model is 
 pecuharly adapted to a country of manifold nation- 
 alities, interests, and classes. Races and immigrants 
 in America have not disproved democracy — they 
 have proved the need of more democracy. 
 
 This is seen also in the distinction between men and 
 measures. It often has been noted that in American 
 elections the voters are more interested in voting for 
 candidates than they are in voting on issues. The 
 candidate arouses a personal and concrete interest 
 — the issue is abstract and comphcated. The candi- 
 date calls out a full vote — the issue is decided by a 
 partial vote. 
 
 This difference is partly the result of organization. 
 The candidate has a political party, campaign funds, 
 and personal workers to bring out the vote. The 
 issue has only its merits and demerits. Equally 
 important under American conditions is the race or 
 nationality of the candidate. This feature is often 
 concealed by the ingenuity of pohtical managers 
 in nominating a ticket on which the several nationali- 
 ties are "recognized." But with the recent progress 
 of the movement to abohsh party conventions and 
 
 ' See description of the Belgium system by the author, Review 
 of Reviews, May,, igoo; also, "Representation of Interests," In- 
 dependent, June, 1900; "Proportional Representation." 
 184 
 
POLITICS 
 
 to nominate candidates directly at the primaries the 
 racial prejudices of the voters show themselves. 
 The nationalities line up for their own nationality, 
 and the political and economic issues are thrown in 
 the background. It is different when they vote 
 on the issues directly. The vital questions of poli- 
 tics, industry, corporations, and monopoly which 
 menace the country, unless rightly answered, cut 
 across the lines of nationality. The German farmer, 
 manufacturer, wage-earner, merchant, capitalist, 
 and monopolist may all unite to elect a popular Ger- 
 man to office, but they do not unite to give a corpora- 
 tion a monopoly. The same is true of other nationali- 
 ties. Wherever the referendum has been fairly 
 tested, in Chicago, Detroit, Oregon, and elsewhere, 
 the sound judgment of all races has prevailed over 
 bias, prejudice, or racial jealousy. There none can 
 claim preeminence, for all have shown their share 
 of patriotism, intelligence, and regard for equal 
 rights. By an automatic self-disfranchisement the 
 ignorant, the corrupt, and the indifferent of all races 
 eliminate themselves by failing to vote. Instead of 
 being dismissed on the ground that voters care 
 mainly for men and less for measures, the referendum 
 should be adopted on the ground that it permits those 
 interested in measures to decide the question. Those 
 who are not interested enough to vote do thereby 
 proclaim that they are satisfied whichever side wins. 
 The initiative and referendum are, above all other 
 forms of government, the specific remedy for the ill§ 
 i8s 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 of universal suffrage and conflicting nationalities. 
 Race antagonism springs from personalities, race 
 coalescence from community of interest. A vote 
 for candidates intensifies antagonism — a vote on 
 measures promotes community. 
 
 There are, indeed, some kinds of measures which 
 stir up race antagonism. But the keenest of these 
 have happily been eliminated. More intense than 
 any other source of discord is religious belief. Reli- 
 gious differences in America are not so much theo- 
 logical as racial in character. The Judaism of the 
 Jew, the Protestantism of the British and colonial 
 American, the Lutheranism of the German, the 
 Roman Catholicism of the Irish, Italian, and Slav, 
 the Greek CathoUcism of other Slavs, all testify 
 to the history and psychology of races. Far-sighted 
 indeed were our fathers who separated Church and 
 State. Were the people taxed to support religion, 
 every election would be a contest of races. All other 
 questions would be subordinate, and democracy 
 impossible. But with religion relegated to private 
 judgment, each race is free to cultivate at will that 
 one of its own peculiarities most fanatically adhered 
 to, but most repellent to other races, while uniting 
 with the others on what is most essential to democracy. 
 Religious freedom is more than a private right — 
 it is an American necessity. 
 
 Another class of measures running partly along 
 race lines are sumptuary laws, especially those regu- 
 lating, saloons and Sunday observance. In the 
 i86 
 
POLITICS 
 
 Southern states saloon prohibition is largely a race 
 discrimination and a race protection. In the North 
 it often is American puritanism of the country against 
 European liberalism of the cities. Here the referen- 
 dum shows itseK as the conciliator of nationalities. 
 Upon no other issue has the popular vote been so 
 generally resorted to. This issue comes close to the 
 habits and passions of the masses. It takes prece- 
 dence of all others except religion, but cannot be 
 evaded like religion. If legislative bodies and execu- 
 tive officials decide the question, then the German 
 or the Irishman adds to his zeal for the election of a 
 conationalist his thirst for the election of a candidate 
 with habits like his own. But when left to a popular 
 vote, the saloon question is separated from the choice 
 of candidates, and other issues come forward. A 
 majority vote, too, pacifies the minority of all races, 
 where the act of a legislative body leaves the suspi- 
 cion of unfair advantage taken by unrepresentative 
 politicians. By the exigencies of the situation the ref- 
 erendum has been invoked to take both the saloon 
 problem and its share of the race problem "out of 
 politics." The lesson is apphcable wherever race or 
 nationality conflicts with democracy. With questions 
 of religious belief eliminated by the constitution, and 
 questions of personal habits eliminated by the ref- 
 erendum, other questions 'of race antagonism will be 
 eliminated by the initiative and the referendum.' 
 
 • Commons, "Proportional Representation," Appendix. Pub- 
 lications of the Federation for Majority Rule, Washington, B.C. 
 187 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Suffrage. — The climax of liberality in donating 
 the suffrage to all races and conditions was reached 
 with the fifteenth amendment in 1869. At that time 
 not only had the negro been enfranchised ; but nearly 
 a score of Western and Southern states and territories 
 had enfranchised the alien. So liberal were these 
 states in welcoming the immigrant that they allowed 
 him to vote as soon as he declared his intention to take 
 out naturalization papers. This declaration, under 
 the federal law, is made at least two years before the 
 papers are granted, and it may be made as soon as the 
 immigrant has landed. Thus in some of those states 
 he could vote as soon as he acquired a legal residence, 
 that is, four or four and one-haK years before he ac- 
 quired citizenship. Several of these states have 
 recently changed these laws, but there remain nine 
 that continue to accept the alien as a voter. 
 
 In the Eastern states such generosity was not 
 granted by law but was practised by fraud. Natu- 
 ralization papers are issued by federal courts and 
 by state courts of record. The law gives the judge 
 much discretion, for he is required to refuse the cer- 
 tificate if he is not satisfied that the alien is of good 
 moral character, attached to the Constitution, and well 
 disposed. But so careless or crowded are the judges 
 that seldom have they examined the applicants. 
 Indeed the political managers have had the option 
 of judges and could take their immigrants to the court 
 that would shut its eyes. Many thousands of fraudu- 
 lent papers have been secured in this way, beginning 
 188 
 
POLITICS 
 
 at the very time when the naturalization law was 
 enacted in 1802, but increasing enormously during 
 the past forty years.* 
 
 Finally, in 1906, Congress enacted a law giving to 
 the Bureau of Immigration control over naturaliza- 
 tion. The object is to bring all of the courts under 
 a imiform practice, to provide complete records and 
 means of identification, to establish publicity, to 
 enable the government to appear in court and resist 
 fraudulent naturalization, and to impose severe 
 penalties.^ The law also adds something to the 
 qualifications required of the alien. He must not 
 be an anarchist or a polygamist, nor a believer of 
 such doctrines; he must be able to speak the English 
 language, and must intend to reside permanently 
 in the United States.' The language restriction 
 affects but few, since in 1900 only 3.3 per cent of the 
 naturalized foreign-bom males of voting age could 
 not speak English.* The intention of permanent 
 residence, as well as the entire measure, is designed 
 to remove the abuse of foreigners' acquiring citizen- 
 ship in order to return to their native land and defy 
 their rightful government. On the administrative 
 side this law is of great significance. It marks a 
 serious beginning on the part of the federal govem- 
 
 ' Hunt, Gaillard, " Federal Control of Naturalization," World's 
 Work, 11: 7095 (1906). 
 
 ' " Report to the President on Naturalization." 
 
 ' " Naturalization Laws and Regulations of October, 1906," 
 published by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. 
 
 * Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. 929. 
 189 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 ment of protecting the citizenship that a generation 
 before it had so liberally bestowed. 
 
 There are certain races which by law are prohibited 
 from naturalization. For nearly seventy years the 
 law on the subject enacted in 1802 admitted to citizen- 
 ship only free white persons. This was amended 
 in 1870 to admit "aliens of African nationality and 
 persons of African descent." But other colored races 
 were not admitted, so that the Chinese, Japanese, or 
 Malay immigrant has never been eligible to citizen- 
 ship. His children, however, bom in this country 
 are citizens, and cannot be excluded from voting on 
 account of race or color. Indians living in tribes 
 are foreigners, but if they recognize allegiance by pay- 
 ing taxes or dividing up their land in severalty they 
 are citizens and voters. 
 
 Of the immigrant races eligible to citizenship their 
 importance as possible voters is greater than their 
 importance in the population. This is because men 
 and boys come in greater numbers than women and 
 children. Ten million foreign-born population fur- 
 nishes 5,000,000 males of voting age, but 66,000,000 
 native population furnishes only 16,000,000 males of 
 voting age. In other words, one-half of the foreign- 
 bom, and only one-fourth of the native-born, are 
 potential voters. But not all of the potential voters 
 are actual voters. With a grand total in the year 
 1900 of 21,000,000 of the proper sex and age, only 
 15,000,000 went to the polls. The ratio is five out 
 of seven. Two million negroes were excluded, and 
 190 
 
. POLITICS 
 
 1,400,000 foreign-bom had not yet naturalized. 
 This leaves 2,600,000 natives and foreign-bom who 
 might have voted but did not. The foreigner who 
 takes out his citizenship papers does it mainly to vote. 
 Two-thirds of them had done so or declared their 
 intention in 1900.' Probably the proportion of native 
 whites who did not vote was 15 per cent of their total 
 number, and the proportion of foreign-bom who did 
 not, or could not, was over 40 per cent. 
 
 But this proportion differs greatly among the sev- 
 eral races. It is not so much a difference in willing- 
 ness as a difference in opportunity. Five years 
 are required for naturalization, and while 40 per cent 
 of those who have been here six to nine years have 
 not declared their intention nor taken out their 
 papers, only 7 per cent of those who have been here 
 twenty years retain their allegiance to foreign gov- 
 ernments.^ This increases relatively the political 
 weight of the Teutonic and Celtic races which are 
 oldest in point of immigration, and reduces relatively 
 the weight of the Italian, Slav, and Jewish races. 
 The figures below make this quite plain. The table 
 shows the proportion of foreign-bom who remain 
 aliens, in the sense that they have neither taken out 
 citizenship papers nor declared their intention of 
 doing so. Only 7 to 13 per cent of the foreigners 
 from Northwestem Europe are aliens, compared 
 with 35 to 60 per cent of those from Eastern and 
 
 'Twetfth Census, "Abstract," p. i8. 
 
 'Twelfth Census, "Abstract," p. 19. 
 
 191 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 Southern Europe. In course of time these differences 
 will diminish, and the Italian and Slav will approach 
 the Irishman and German in their share of American 
 suffrage : — 
 
 Per cent of Aliens among Foreign-born Males op Voting 
 Age' 
 
 Wales . 
 
 
 
 7.1 Canada, English . 
 
 21. 1 
 
 Germany 
 
 
 
 8.3 Russia (mainly Jews) 
 
 3S-2 
 
 Norway . 
 
 
 
 9.7 Canada, French . 
 
 3»-5 
 
 Ireland . 
 
 
 
 lo.i Finland. 
 
 38.6 
 
 Denmark 
 
 
 
 10.3 Austria (largely Slavs) . 
 
 44.6 
 
 Holland . 
 
 
 
 1 1. 6 Portugal 
 
 S1.6 
 
 Sweden . 
 
 
 
 11.9 Italy .... 
 
 S3-0 
 
 Scotland . 
 
 
 
 12.5 Hungary (mainly Slavs) 
 
 S3-I 
 
 Bohemia . 
 
 
 
 12.6 Greece .... 
 
 57-8 
 
 England . 
 
 
 
 12.9 Austria, Poland 
 
 61.6 
 
 The right to vote is not "inalienable," neither is 
 the right to life or liberty. Governments give them, 
 refuse them, and take them away. In America this 
 means the state governments. The federal govern- 
 ment only declares that the states must follow the 
 "due process of law," and not discriminate on account 
 of race, religion, or servitude. In allowing the right 
 to vote they may and do discriminate on other 
 grounds, such as morals, illiteracy, intelligence, 
 property, and sex. This may result in race or immi- 
 grant discrimination, and does so in the case of 
 illiteracy and intelligence. After the Irish immigra- 
 tion of the forties, Connecticut in 1855 and Massa- 
 chusetts in 1857 refused thenceforth to enfranchise 
 those who could not read the Constitution. Since 
 1889 six other Northern and Western states — 
 ' Twelfth Census, Vol. I, p. ccxvii. 
 192 
 
POLITICS 
 
 Wyoming, Maine, California, Washington, Dela- 
 ware, and New Hampshire, in the order named — 
 have erected barriers against those who cannot read 
 or write the EngUsh language or the Constitution.* 
 Six Southern states hiave done the same, but one of 
 them, Mississippi, has added another permanent 
 barrier, — intelligence. This is supposed to be meas- 
 ured by ability to "understand" the Constitution as 
 read by a white man. Southern states have also 
 added vagrancy, poll tax, and property clauses even 
 more exclusive than reading and writing.^ The 
 federal courts have refused to interfere because these 
 restrictions in their legal form bear alike on white 
 and black. If in practice they bear unequally, 
 that is a matter for the state courts.' 
 
 To take away the suffrage from many of those who 
 enjoy it is peacefully unpossible under our system. 
 But voters who hold fast to the privilege for them- 
 selves may be induced to deny it to the next genera- 
 tion. It was in this way usually that the foregoing 
 restrictions were introduced. Massachusetts set the 
 example by retaining all who could vote when the 
 test was adopted, and making the exclusion apply 
 only to those who came after. The Southern states 
 
 > Phillips, J. B., "Educational Qualifications of Voters," 
 University of Colorado Studies, Vol. Ill, No. 2 (1906). 
 
 ' Ca£fey, Francis G., " Suffrage Limitations at the South," 
 Political Science Quarterly, 20 : 53 (1905). Report on Political 
 Reform, Union League Club, New York, 1903. 
 
 'Williams v. Mississippi, 170 U.S., 213; Giles v. Harris, 189 
 U.S., 475 ; Giles v. Teasley, 193 U.S., 146. 
 o 193 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 did the same by "grandfather" and "understanding" 
 clauses. By either method, in course of time, the 
 favored voters disappear by death or removal, and 
 the restrictions apply in full to the succeeding gen- 
 eration.* 
 
 The effect of the educational test on the suffrage 
 of the foreign-bom is not as great as might be sup- 
 posed. Naturahzation itself is almost an educational 
 test. Only 6.3 per cent of the naturalized foreigners 
 are iUiterate, but 28 per cent of those who remain 
 aliens are unable to read. In Boston only 2 per cent 
 are excluded from voting through inabihty to read 
 English, although the corresponding aliens are 22 
 per cent. Probably the educational qualification in 
 Massachusetts affects these proportions by lessening 
 the inducement to naturalize, but in Chicago and 
 New York, where that qualification is not required, 
 scarcely more than 5 per cent of those who get 
 naturalized would be unable to vote under such a law, 
 compared with less than i per cent of the native 
 voters.^ In the country at large the disproportion 
 is not so great. Five and eight-tenths per cent of the 
 sons of native parents would be excluded by an edu- 
 cational test against 6.3 per cent of the naturalized 
 foreigners, and only 2 per cent of the native sons of 
 foreigners. In the several Southern states the test, 
 if equally applied, will exclude 6 to 20 per cent of the 
 
 ' This does not apply to the " understanding" clause in Missis- 
 sippi, which is pennanent. 
 
 Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. ccxiii, ccxv. 
 194 
 
POLITICS 
 
 white voters and 35 to 60 per cent of the colored voters.* 
 In a Southern city like Memphis it would exclude 
 I per cent of the white and 38 per cent of the colored. 
 Tested by the standards of democracy, the ability 
 to read and write the English language is a proper 
 qualification. It is perhaps the maximum that can 
 be required, for to test the ability to understand what 
 is read and written is to open the door to partisanship 
 and race discrimination. Yet it is intelligence that 
 makes the suffrage an instrument of protection, and 
 it is not a denial of rights to refuse such an in- 
 strument to one who injures himself with it. The 
 literacy qualification is one that can be acquired by 
 effort. Other tests, especially the property qualifica- 
 tion, are an assertion of inequality. Yet it is not 
 strange that with the corrupt and inefficient govern- 
 ments that have accompanied universal suffrage 
 there should have occurred a reaction. This has not 
 always expressed itself in the policy of restricting 
 the suffrage, for that can with difficulty be accom- 
 plished. It has shown itself rather in withdrawing 
 government as far as possible from the control of the 
 voters. The so-called "business theory" which has 
 so generally been applied to the reform of city gov- 
 ernments has converted the city as far as possible to 
 the model of a private corporation, with its general 
 manager, the mayor. The city has been denied its 
 proper functions, and these have been turned over to 
 private parties. But this reaction seems to have 
 
 ' Twelfth Census, Vol. I, pp. cciv, ccv. 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 reached its limit. It is now understood to have been 
 simply the legal recognition of an incipient plutocracy 
 establishing itself under the forms of democracy. 
 The return movement has begun, and the rescue of 
 democracy is sought, as stated above, in forms and 
 functions of government still more democratic. 
 
 The way plutocracy looks when it has passed the 
 incipient stage may be seen in Hawaii.' It is as 
 though we had annexed those islands in order to 
 watch in our own back yard the fruit of excessive 
 immigration. A population of 154,000 furnishes 
 65,000 Hawaiians, Portuguese, and other Caucasians. 
 The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have 87,000 
 population and no votes. The American contingent 
 is some 17,000 souls and 3000 votes. The latter 
 represent four classes or interests: the capitahst 
 planters owning two-thirds of the property; super- 
 intendents, engineers, and foremen managing the 
 plantation labor; skilled mechanics; small employers, 
 merchants, and farmers. In order to get plantation 
 labor and to keep the supply too large and diver- 
 sified for concerted wage demands the planters im- 
 ported contract Chinese in place of Hawaiians, then 
 Japanese, then Koreans. As each race rises in 
 standards and independence it leaves the planta- 
 tions to enter trades, manufactures, and merchandis- 
 ing. It drives out the wage-earners from the less 
 skilled occupations, then from the more skilled, then 
 the small manufacturers, contractors, and merchants. 
 
 ' See " Reports on Hawaii." 
 196 
 
POLITICS 
 
 The American middle classes disappear, partly 
 by emigration to California, partly by abandoning 
 business and relying on the values of real estate 
 which rise through the competition of low standards 
 of wages and profits, and partly by attaching them- 
 selves to the best-paid positions offered by the plant- 
 ers. In proportion as they move up in the scale 
 through the entrance of immigrants in the lower 
 positions, they transfer their allegiance from democ- 
 racy to plutocracy. The planters themselves are 
 caught in a circle. The rising values of their land 
 absorb the high tariff on sugar and prevent rising 
 wages if the values are to be kept up. The Japanese, 
 with contract labor abolished, have shown a dispo- 
 sition to strike for higher wages. This has led to 
 advances at the expense of profits, and the resulting 
 "scarcity of labor" compels the planters again to ask 
 for contract Chinese coolies. Immigration is thus 
 only a makeshift remedy for the exactions of unions 
 and the undevelopment of resources. More immi- 
 gration requires perpetually more and still more, 
 till the resulting plutocracy seeks to save itself by 
 servile labor. A moderate amount of immigrant 
 labor, assimilated and absorbed into the body politic, 
 stimulates industry and progress, but an excessive 
 and indigestible amount leads to the search for coer- 
 cive remedies and ends in the stagnation of industry. 
 The protective tariff was supposed to build up free 
 American labor, but in Hawaii, with unrestricted 
 immigration, it has handed us American plutocracy. 
 197 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 A German statistician,* after studying popula- 
 tion statistics of the United States and observing the 
 " race suicide " of the native American stock, con- 
 cludes: " The question of restriction on immigration 
 is not a matter of higher or lower wages, nor a matter 
 of more or less criminals and idiots, but the exclu- 
 sion of a large part of the immigrants might cost the 
 United States their place among the world powers." 
 
 Exactly the opposite opinion was expressed in 
 1891 by Francis A. Walker,^ the leading American 
 statistician of his time, and superintendent of the 
 censuses of 1870 and 1880. He said : " Foreign immi- 
 gration into this country has, from the time it first 
 assumed large proportions, amounted not to a re- 
 inforcement of our population, but a replacement of 
 native by foreign stock. . . . The American shrank 
 from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. 
 He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind 
 of day labor with these new elements of population ; 
 he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daugh- 
 ters into the world to enter into that competition. 
 
 * Kuczynski, " Einwanderungspolitik," p. 35. 
 'Forum, 11 : 634-743 (1891). Reprinted in "Discussions," 
 etc., pp. 417-426, 
 
 198 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 • . . The more rapidly foreigners came into the 
 United States, the smaller was the rate of increase, 
 not merely among the native population separately, 
 but throughout the population of the country as 
 a whole," including the descendants of the earlier 
 foreign immigrants. 
 
 Walker's statements of fact, whatever we may say 
 of his explanations, are easily substantiated. From 
 earliest colonial times until the census of 1840 the 
 people of the United States multiplied more rapidly 
 than the people of any other modem nation, not 
 excepting the prolific French Canadians. The first 
 six censuses, beginning in 1790, show that, without 
 appreciable immigration, the population doubled 
 every twenty years, and had this rate of increase 
 continued until the present time, the descendants of 
 the colonial white and negro stock in the year 1900 
 would have numbered 100,000,000 instead of the 
 combined colonial, immigrant, and negro total of 
 76,000,000. Indeed, if we take the total immigration 
 from 1820 to 1900, exceeding 19,000,000 people, and 
 apply a slightly higher than the average rate of in- 
 crease from births, we shall find that in the year 1900 
 one-half of the white population is derived from 
 immigrant stock, leaving the other half, or but 
 33,000,000 whites, derived from the colonial stock.' 
 
 ' Professor Smith, for the year 1888, estimated the colonial ele- 
 ment at 29,000,000 and the immigrant element at 26,000,000, 
 applying to the immigrants the average rate of increase |rom 
 births. "Emigration an^ Immigration," pp. 69^-61, 
 
 199 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 This is scarcely more than one-third of the number 
 that should have been expected had the colpnial 
 element continued to multiply from 1840 to 1900 
 as it had multiplied from 1790 to 1840. 
 
 An interesting corroboration of these speculations 
 is the prediction made in the year 181 5, thirty years 
 before the great migration of the nineteenth century, 
 by the mathematician and publicist, Elkanah Wat- 
 son.* On the basis of the increase shown in the 
 first three censuses he made computations of the 
 probable population for each census year to 1900, 
 and I have drawn up the following table, showing 
 the actual population compared with his estimates. 
 Superintendent Walker, in the essay above quoted, 
 uses Watson's figures, and points out the remarkable 
 fact that those predictions were within less than one 
 per cent of the actual population until the year i860, 
 although, meanwhile, there had come nearly 5,000,000 
 immigrants whom Watson could not have foreseen. 
 Thus the population of i860, notwithstanding access 
 of the miUions of immigrants, was only 310,000, or 
 one per cent less than Watson had predicted. And 
 the falling off since i860 has been even greater, for, 
 notwithstanding the immigration of 20,000,000 per- 
 sons since 1820, the population in 1900 was 75,000,000, 
 or 25 per cent less than Watson's computations. 
 
 This question of the "race suicide" of the Ameri- 
 can or colonial stock should be regarded as the most 
 fundamental of our social problems, or rather as the 
 
 ' Watson, p. 522. 
 200 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION 
 
 
 Population 
 (Census) 
 
 Watson-s 
 Estimate 
 
 Watson's 
 Error 
 
 Foreign 
 Immigration 
 FOR Decade 
 
 1790 
 
 3,929,214 
 
 
 
 
 1800 
 
 S.308,483 
 
 
 
 50,000 
 
 I8IO 
 
 7,239,881 
 
 
 
 70,000 
 
 1820 
 
 9,633,822 
 
 9.625,734 
 
 -8,088 
 
 114,000 
 
 1830 
 
 12,866,020 
 
 12,833,645 
 
 -32,375 
 
 143,439 
 
 1840 
 
 17,069,453 
 
 17,116,526 
 
 + 47.073 
 
 599,125 
 
 1850 
 
 23,191,876 
 
 23,185,368 
 
 -6,508 
 
 ' 1,713,251 
 
 i860 
 
 31,443,321 
 
 31,753,825 
 
 + 310,503 
 
 2,598.214 
 
 1870 
 
 38,558,371 
 
 42,328,432 
 
 + 3,770,061 
 
 2,314,824 
 
 1880 
 
 50,155.783 
 
 56,450,241 
 
 + 6,294,458 
 
 2,812,191 
 
 1890 
 
 62,622,250 
 
 77,266,989 
 
 + 14,644,739 
 
 5,246,613 
 
 1900 
 
 75,559.258 
 
 100,235,985 
 
 + 24,676,727 
 
 3,687,564 
 
 Total immigration 1820-1900 19,229,224 
 
 most fundamental consequence of our social and 
 industrial institutions. It may be met by exhorta- 
 tion, as when President Roosevelt says, "If the 
 men of the nation are not anxious to work in many 
 different ways, with all their might and strength, 
 and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious 
 to be fathers of families, and if the women do not 
 recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is 
 to be a good wife and m.other, why that nation has 
 cause to be alarmed about its future." ' 
 
 The anxiety of President Roosevelt is well grounded ; 
 but if race suicide is not in itself an original cause, 
 but is the result of other causes, then exhortation will 
 accomplish but little, while the removal or ameliora- 
 tion of the other causes will of itself correct the re- 
 sulting evil. Where, then, shall we look for the 
 
 , i Van Vorst, "The Woman Who Toils," p. viii. 
 
 201 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 causes of race suicide, or, more accurately speaking, 
 for the reduced proportion of children brought into 
 the world? The immediate circumstances consist 
 in postponing the age of marriage, in limiting the 
 number of births after marriage, and in an increase 
 in the proportion of unmarried people. The reasons 
 are almost solely moral and not physical. Those who 
 are ambitious and studious, who strive to reach a 
 better position in the world for themselves and their 
 children, and who have not inherited wealth, will 
 generally postpone marriage until they have educated 
 themselves, or accumulated property, or secured a 
 permanent position. They will then not bring into 
 the world a larger number of children than they can 
 provide for on the basis of the standing which they 
 themselves have attained ; for observation shows that 
 those who marry early have large families, and are 
 generally kept on a lower station in life. The real 
 problem, therefore, with this class of people, is the 
 opportunities for earning a living. In the earlier 
 days, when the young couple could take up vacant 
 land, and farming was the goal of all, a large family 
 and the cooperation of wife and children were a 
 help rather than a hindrance. To-day the couple, 
 unless the husband has a superior position, must go 
 together to the factory or mill, and the children 
 are a burden until they reach the wage-earning age. 
 Furthermore, wage-earning is uncertain, factories 
 shut down, and the man with a large family is thrown 
 upon his friends or charity. To admonigh people 
 
 202 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 living under these conditions to go forth and muUiply 
 is to advise the cure of race suicide by race dete- 
 rioration. 
 
 Curiously enough, these observations apply with 
 even greater force to the second generation of immi- 
 grants than to the native stock, for among the daugh- 
 ters of the foreign-bom only 19 per cent of those aged 
 15 to 24 years are married, while among daughters 
 of native parents 30 per cent are married; and for the 
 men of 20 to 29 only 26.8 per cent of the native sons 
 of foreigners are married and 38.5 per cent of the sons 
 of natives.* These figures sustain what can be ob- 
 served in many large cities, that the races of immi- 
 grants who came to this country twenty-five or more 
 years ago are shrinking from competition with the new 
 races from Southern Europe. 
 
 Boston, for example, with its large Irish immigra- 
 tion beginning two generations ago, shows a similar 
 disproportion. Of the American daughters of for- 
 eign parents 15 to 24 years of age, only 12 per cent 
 are married, but of the daughters of native parents 
 17 per cent are married; of the sons of foreign parents 
 20 to 29 years of age, only 20 per cent are married, 
 but of the sons of native parents 26 per cent are mar- 
 ried. The contrast with the immigrants themselves 
 is striking. In Boston, 24 per cent of the foreign- 
 bom women aged 15 to 24 are married, and 35 per 
 cent of the foreign-bom men aged 20 to 29.^ In other 
 
 • Computed from the Twelfth Census, Vol. II, p. Ixxxvii, £f, 
 ' Computed from the Twelfth Census, Vol. II, p. 312. 
 .203 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 words, the early marriages of immigrant men and 
 women are nearly twice as many as those of the 
 American-bom sons and daughters of immigrants, 
 and only one-third more than those of the sons and 
 daughters of native stock. With such a showing as 
 this it would seem that our "place among the world 
 powers" depends indeed on immigration, for the 
 immigrants' children are more constrained to race 
 suicide than the older American stock.* 
 
 The competition is not so severe in country dis- 
 tricts where the native stock prevails; but in the 
 cities and industrial centres the skilled and ambitious 
 workman and workwoman discover that in order to 
 keep themselves above the low standards of the immi- 
 grants they must postpone marriage. The effect is 
 noticeable and disastrous in the case of the Irish- 
 Americans. Displaced by Itahans and Slavs, many 
 of the young men have fallen into the hoodlum and 
 criminal element. Here moral causes produce 
 physical causes of race destruction, for the vicious 
 elements of the population disappear through the 
 diseases bequeathed to their progeny, and are re- 
 cruited only from the classes forced down from above. 
 On the other hand, many more Irish have risen to 
 
 ' Kuczynski concludes from his study of Massachusetts sta- 
 tistics that "the native population cannot hold its own. It seems 
 to be dying out." Could he have separated the two elements 
 of the native population, he would have found that the immi- 
 grant element is dying out faster than the older native element. 
 "The Fecundity of the Native and Foreign Bom Population in 
 Massachusetts," p. i86. 
 
 204 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 positions of foremanship, or have lived on their wits 
 in politics, or have entered the priesthood. The 
 Irish-American girls, showing independence and 
 ambition, have refused to marry until they could be 
 assured of a husband of steady habits, and they have 
 entered clerical positions, factories, and mills. Thus 
 this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is 
 meeting in our cities the same displacement and is 
 resorting to the same race suicide which itself in- 
 flicted a generation or two earlier on the native colo- 
 nial stock. But the effect is more severe, for the native 
 stock was able to leave the scenes of competition, to 
 go West and take up farms or build cities, but the 
 Irish-American has less opportunity to make such an 
 escape. 
 
 Great numbers of Irishmen, together with others 
 of English, Scotch, German, and American descent, 
 remaining in these industrial centres, have sought 
 to protect themselves and maintain high standards 
 through labor-unions and the so-called " closed shop," 
 by limiting the number of apprentices, excluding 
 immigrants, and giving their sons a preference of 
 admission. But even with the unions they find it 
 necessary also to limit the size of their families, and 
 I am convinced from personal observation, that, 
 were the statistics on this point compiled from the 
 unions of skilled workmen, there would be found even 
 stronger evidences of race suicide than among other 
 classes in the nation. 
 
 To the well-to-do classes freedom from the care 
 
 20S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 of children is not a necessity, but an opportunity for 
 luxury and indulgence. These include the very 
 wealthy, whose round of social functions would be 
 interrupted by home obligations. To them, of 
 course, immigration brings no need of prudence — 
 it rather helps to bring the enormous fortunes which 
 distract their attention from the home. But their 
 numbers are insignificant compared with the millions 
 who determine the fate of the nation. More signifi- 
 cant are the well-to-do farmers and their wives who 
 have inherited the soil redeemed by their fathers, 
 and whose desire to be free for enjoying the fruits of 
 civilization lead them to the position so strongly 
 condemned by President Roosevelt. This class of 
 farmers, as shown in the census map of the size of 
 private famihes,* may be traced across the Eastern 
 and Northern states, running through New England, 
 rural New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and 
 Michigan, parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and 
 Iowa. In the rich counties of southern Michigan, 
 settled and occupied mainly by native stock from 
 New York, the average size of famihes is less than 
 four persons, as it is in a large area of Central New 
 York, whereas for the country at large it is 4.7, 
 and for counties in the mining sections of Michigan 
 occupied by immigrants it rises as high as 5.8 per- 
 sons. 
 
 The census figures showing the size of families 
 do not, however, reveal the number of children bom 
 
 • Twelfth Census, "Statistical Atlas," plate 98. 
 206 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 to a family, since they show only those living to- 
 gether and not those who have moved away or died. 
 This especially affects the large-sized families, and 
 does not reveal, for example, a fact shown by Ku- 
 czynski from the state census of Massachusetts that the 
 average number of children of the foreign-bom women 
 in that state is 4.5, while for native women it is only 
 2.7.* This also affects the showing for a state like 
 West Virginia, composed almost entirely of native 
 Americans of colonial stock, with only 2 per cent 
 foreign-bom and 5 per cent colored, where the 
 average size of famihes is 5.1 persons, the highest in 
 the United States, but where in the Blue Ridge 
 Mountains I have come upon two couples of native 
 white Americans who claimed respectively eighteen 
 and twenty-two children. Throughout the South 
 the reduction in size of families and the postponement 
 of marriage have not occurred to any great extent 
 either among the white or colored races, and these 
 are states to which immigration has contributed 
 less than 3 per cent of their population. Yet, if 
 Superintendent Walker's view is sound in all re- 
 spects, the Southern whites should shrink from com- 
 petition with the negro in the same way that the 
 Northern white shrinks from competition with the 
 immigrant. He does not do so, and the reasons are 
 probably found in the fact that the South has been 
 remote from the struggle of modem competition, and 
 that ignorance and proud contentment fail to spur 
 
 ' "Fecundity," etc., p. 157. 
 207 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the masses to that ambitious striving which rises 
 by means of what Mahhus called the prudential 
 restraints on population. It is quite probable that 
 in the South, with the spread of the factory system 
 and universal education, the growth in numbers 
 through excess of births over deaths will be retarded. 
 
 On the whole it seems that immigration and the 
 competition of inferior races tends to dry up the 
 older and superior races wherever the latter have 
 learned to aspire to an improved standard of hving, 
 and that among well-to-do classes not competing with 
 immigrants, but made wealthier by their low wages, 
 a similar efifect is caused by the desire for luxury 
 and easy living.' 
 
 Americanization. — A line on the chart opposite 
 page 63 shows the proportions between the number of 
 immigrants and the existing population. From this 
 it appears that the enormous immigration of 1906 
 is relatively not as large as the smaller immigration 
 of the years 1849 to 1854, or the year 1882. Three 
 hundred thousand immigrants in 1850 was as large 
 an addition to a population of 23,000,000 as i, 000,000 
 in 1906 to a population of 85,000,000. Judged by 
 mere numbers, the present immigration is not greater 
 than that witnessed by two former periods. Judged 
 by saturation it may be greater, for the former immi- 
 grants were absorbed by colonial Americans, but the 
 present immigrants enter a solution half colonial 
 and half immigrant. The problem of Americaniza- 
 
 *Ross, "Causes of Race Superiority." 
 208 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 tion increases more than the number to be American- 
 ized. What is the nature of this problem, and what 
 are the forces available for its solution? 
 
 The term amalgamation may be used for that mix- 
 ture of blood which unites races in a common stock, 
 while assimilation is that union of their minds and 
 wills which enables them to think and act together. 
 Amalgamation is a process of centuries, but assimila- 
 tion is a process of individual training. Amalga- 
 mation is a blending of races, assimilation a blending 
 of civilizations. Amalgamation is beyond the or- 
 ganized efforts of government, but assimilation can 
 be promoted by social institutions and laws. Amal- 
 gamation therefore cannot attract our practical in- 
 terest, except as its presence or absence sets limits 
 to our efforts toward assimilation. 
 
 Our principal interest in amalgamation is its effect 
 on the negro race. The census statisticians discon- 
 tinued after 1890 the inquiry into the number of 
 mulattoes, but the census of 1890 showed that mu- 
 lattoes were 15 per cent of the total negro population. 
 This was a slightly larger proportion than that of 
 preceding years. The mulatto element of the negro 
 race is almost a race of itself. Its members on the 
 average differ but Uttle if at all from those of the 
 white race in their capacity for advancement, and 
 it is the tragedy of race antagonism that they with 
 their longings should suffer the fate of the more con- 
 tented and thoughtless blacks.' In their veins nms 
 
 ' See Du Bois, "The Soul of Black Folk." 
 V 209 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the blood of white aristocracy, and it is a curious 
 psychology of the Anglo-Saxon that assigns to the 
 inferior race those equally entitled to a place among 
 the superior. But sociology offers compensation for 
 the injustice to physiology. The mulatto is the 
 natural leader, instructor, and spokesman of the 
 black. Prevented from withdrawing himseK above 
 the fortunes of his fellows, he devotes himself to their 
 elevation. This fact becomes clear in proportion 
 as the need of practical education becomes clear. 
 The effective work of the whites through missionary 
 schools and colleges has not been the elevation of the 
 black, but the elevation of mulattoes to teach the 
 blacks. A new era for the blacks is beginning when 
 the mulatto sees his own future in theirs. 
 
 Apart from the negro we have very little knowledge 
 of the amalgamation of races in America. We only 
 know that for the most part they have blended into 
 a united people with harmonious ideals, and the 
 English, the German, the Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, 
 and the Huguenot have become the American. 
 
 We speak of superior and inferior races, and this 
 is well enough, but care should be taken to dis- 
 tinguish between inferiority and backwardness — 
 between that superiority which is the original endow- 
 ment of race and that which results from the educa- 
 tion and training which we call civilization. While 
 there are superior and inferior races, there are primi- 
 tive, mediaeval, and modem civilizations, and there 
 are certain mental qualities required for and pro- 
 
 210 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 duced by these different grades of civilization. A 
 superior race may have a primitive or mediaeval 
 civilization, and therefore its individuals may never 
 have exhibited the superior mental qualities with 
 which they are actually endowed, and which a mod- 
 em civilization would have called into action. The 
 adults coming from such a civilization seem to be 
 inferior in their mental qualities, but their children, 
 placed in the new environments of the advanced 
 civilization, exhibit at once the qualities of the latter. 
 The Chinaman comes from a mediaeval civilization — 
 he shows little of those qualities which are the prod- 
 uct of Western civilization, and with his imitative- 
 ness, routine, and traditions, he has earned the repu- 
 tation of being entirely non-assimilable. But the 
 children of Chinamen, bom and reared in this coun- 
 try, entirely disprove this charge, for they are as apt 
 in absorbing the spirit and method of American in- 
 stitutions as any Caucasian,* The race is superior 
 but backward. 
 
 The Teutonic races until five hundred years after 
 Christ were primitive in their civilization, yet they 
 had the mental capacities which made them, like Ar- 
 minius, able to comprehend and absorb the highest 
 Roman civilization. They passed through the medi- 
 aeval period and then came out into the modem period 
 of advanced civilization, yet during these two thou- 
 sand years their mental capacities, the original en- 
 dowment of race, have scarcely improved. It is 
 
 ' Report on Hawaii, Bulletin No. 47, p. 715. 
 211 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 civilization, not race evolution, that has transformed 
 the primitive warrior into the philosopher, scientist, 
 artisan, and business man. Could their babies have 
 been taken from the woods two thousand years ago 
 and transported to the homes and schools of modem 
 America, they could have covered in one generation 
 the progress of twenty centuries. Other races, hke 
 the Scotch and the Irish, made the transition from 
 primitive institutions to modem industrial habits 
 within a single century, and Professor Brinton, our 
 most profound student of the American Indian, has 
 said,' "I have been in close relations to several full- 
 blood American Indians who had been removed 
 from an aboriginal environment and instructed in 
 this manner [in American schools and communities], 
 and I could not perceive that they were either in in- 
 tellect or sympathies inferior to the usual type of the 
 American gentleman. One of them notably had a 
 refined sense of humor as well as uncommon acute- 
 ness of observation." 
 
 The line between superior and inferior, as dis- 
 tinguished from advanced and backward, races ap- 
 pears to be the line between the temperate and tropi- 
 cal zones. The two belts of earth between the tropics 
 of Capricorn and Cancer and the arctic and antarctic 
 circles have been the areas where man in his stmggle 
 for existence developed the qualities of mind and will 
 — the ingenuity, self-reliance, self-control, strenuous 
 exertion, and will power — which befit the modem 
 
 ' "Religions of Primitive People," p. 15. 
 212 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 industrial civilization. But in the tropics these 
 qualities are less essential, for where nature lavishes 
 food, and winks at the neglect of clothing and shelter, 
 there ignorance, superstition, physical prowess, and 
 sexual passion have an equal chance with intelligence, 
 foresight, thrift, and self-control. The children of 
 all the races of the temperate zones are eligible to the 
 highest American civilization, and it only needs that 
 they be "caught" young enough. There is perhaps 
 no class of people more backward than the 3,000,000 
 poor whites of the Appalachian Mountains, but there 
 is no class whose children are better equipped by 
 heredity to attain distinction in any field of American 
 endeavor. This much cannot be said for the children 
 of the tropical zones. Amalgamation is their door 
 to assimilation. 
 
 Before we can intelligently inquire into the agen- 
 cies of Americanization we must first agree on what 
 we mean by the term. I can think of no comprehen- 
 sive and concise description equal to that of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln: "Government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people." This description should be 
 applied not only to the state but to other institutions. 
 In the home it means equality of husband and wife; 
 in the church it means the voice of the laity; in 
 industry the participation of the workmen. 
 
 Unhappily it cannot be said that Lincoln's descrip- 
 tion has ever been attained. It is the goal which he 
 and others whom we recognize as true Americans 
 have pointed out. Greater than any other obstacle 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 in the road toward that goal have been our race 
 divisions. Government for the people depends on 
 government by the people, and this is difficult where 
 the people cannot think and act together. Such is 
 the problem of Americanization. 
 
 In the earlier days the most powerful agency of 
 assimilation was frontier life. The pioneers "were 
 left almost entirely to their own resources in this 
 great struggle. They developed a spirit of seK- 
 reliance, a capacity for seK-govemment, which are 
 the most prominent characteristics of the American 
 people." ' Frontier life includes pioneer mining 
 camps as well as pioneer farming. 
 
 Next to the frontier the farms of America are the 
 richest field of assimilation. Here the process is 
 sometimes thought to be slower than it is in the cities, 
 but any one who has seen it under both conditions 
 cannot doubt that if it is slower it is more real. In 
 the cities the children are more regularly brought 
 under the influence of the public schools, but more 
 profound and lasting than the education of the schools 
 is the education of the street and the community. 
 The work of the schools in a great city like New York 
 cannot be too highly praised, and without such work 
 the future of the immigrant's child would be dark. 
 In fact the children of the immigrant are better pro- 
 vided with school facilities than the children of the 
 Americans. Less than i per cent of their children 
 lo to 14 years of age are illiterate, but the proportion 
 
 ' Smith, " Assimilation of Nationalities,'' p. 440. 
 214 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 of illiterates among children of native parents is over 
 4 per cent. This is not because the foreigner is 
 more eager to educate his child than is the native, 
 but because nearly three-fourths of the foreigners' 
 children and only one-sixth, of the natives' children 
 live in the larger cities, where schools and compul- 
 sory attendance prevail. Were it not for compulsory 
 education, the child of the peasant immigrant would 
 be, Uke the child of the Slav in the anthracite coal 
 fields, "the helpless victim of the ignorance, fru- 
 gality, and industrial instincts of his parents." ' 
 As it is, they drop out of the schools at the earliest 
 age allowed by law, and the hostiUty of foreigners 
 to factory legislation and its corollary compulsory 
 school legislation is more difficult to overcome than 
 the hostility of American employers, both of whom 
 might profit by the work of their children. The 
 thoroughness with which the great cities of the North 
 enforce the requirements of primary education leaves 
 but little distinction between the children of natives 
 and the children of foreigners, but what difference 
 remains is to the advantage of the natives. In Boston 
 in 1900 only 5 children of native parents were ilhter- 
 ate, and 22 native children of foreign parents, a ratio 
 of one-twentieth of i per cent for the natives and one- 
 tenth of I per cent for the foreigners. In New York 
 68 of the 83,000 children of native parents were illit- 
 erate, and 311 of the 166,000 native children of foreign 
 parents, a ratio insignificant in both cases, but more 
 
 •Lovejoy, "The Slav Child," Charities, July, 1905, p. 884. 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 than twice as great for the foreigners as- for the 
 natives.' Taking all of the cities of at least 50,000 
 population, more than one-fourth of the foreign-bom 
 children 10 to 15 years of age are bread-winners, 
 and only one-tenth of the children of native parents. 
 The influence of residence in America is shown by the 
 fact that of the children of foreigners bom in this 
 country the proportion of bread-winners is reduced to 
 one-seventh.' 
 
 But it is the community more than the school 
 that gives the child his actual working ideals and his 
 habits and methods of hfe. And in a great city, 
 with its separation of classes, this community is the 
 slums, with its mingling of all races and the worst 
 of the Americans. He sees and knows surprisingly 
 little of the America that his school-books describe. 
 The American churches, his American employers, are 
 in other parts of the city, and his Americanization 
 is left to the school-teacher, the policeman, and the 
 politician, who generally are but one generation before 
 him from Europe. But on the farm he sees and 
 knows all classes, the best and the worst, and even 
 where his parents strive to isolate their community 
 and to preserve the language and the methods of the 
 old country, only a generation or two are required for 
 the surrounding Americanism to permeate. Mean- 
 while healthful work, steady, industrious, and thrifty 
 
 ■ Twelfth Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 374. 
 ' " Chad Labor in the United States," p. 15, Bureau o£ the 
 Census. 
 
 2l6 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 habits, have made him capable of rising to the best 
 that his surroundings exemplify. 
 
 Since the year 1900 the Immigration Bureau has 
 not inquired as to the religious faith of the immi- 
 grants. In that year, when the nvunber admitted 
 was 361,000, one-fifth were Protestants, mainly from 
 Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, 
 and Finland. One-tenth were Jews, 4 per cent were 
 Greek Catholics, and 52 per cent were Roman Catho- 
 lics. With the shifting of the sources toward the 
 east and south of Europe the proportion of Catholic 
 and Jewish faith has increased. During this transi- 
 tion the Protestant churches of America have begun 
 to awaken to a serious problem confronting them. 
 The three New England states which have given 
 their religion and poUtical character to Northern and 
 Western states are themselves now predominantly 
 Cathohc. In all of the Northern manufacturing and 
 industrial states and in their great cities the marvel- 
 lous organization and discipline of the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church has carefully provided every precinct, 
 ward, or district with chapels, cathedrals, and priests 
 even in advance of the inflow of population, while 
 the scattered forces of Protestantism overlap in 
 some places and overlook other places. Two con- 
 sequences have followed. The Protestant churches 
 in much the larger part of their activities have drawn 
 themselves apart in an intellectual and social round 
 of pohte entertainment for the famiUes of the mer- 
 cantile, clerical, professional, and employing classes, 
 
 217 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 while the Catholic churches minister to the laboring 
 and wage-earning classes. In a minor and relatively 
 insignificant part of their activities the Protestant 
 churches have supported missionaries, colporters, 
 and chapels among the immigrants, the wage-earners, 
 and their children. Their home missionary societies, 
 which in the earlier days followed up their own be- 
 lievers on the frontier and enabled them to establish 
 churches in their new homes, have in the past decade 
 or two become foreign missionary societies working 
 at home. Nothing is more significant or important in 
 the history of American Protestantism than the zeal 
 and patriotism with which a few missionaries in this 
 unaccustomed field have begun to lead the way. 
 By means of addresses, periodicals, books, study 
 classes, they are gradually awakening the churches 
 to the needs of the foreigner at home.^ Among cer- 
 tain nationalities, especially the Italians and Slavs, 
 they find an open field, for thousands of those na- 
 tionalities, though nominally Catholic, are indifferent 
 to the church that they associate with oppression at 
 home. Among these nationalities already several 
 converts have become missionaries in turn to their 
 own people, and with the barrier of language and 
 suspicion thus bridged over, the influence of the 
 Protestant religion is increasing. Perhaps more than 
 anything else is needed a federation of the Protes- 
 tant denominations similar to that recently arranged 
 in Porto Rico. That island has been laid out in dis- 
 
 ' Grose, "Aliens or Americans?" 
 2l8 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 tricts through mutual agreement of the home mis- 
 sionary societies, and each district is assigned ex- 
 clusively to a single denomination. 
 
 While the Protestant churches have been with- 
 drawing from the districts invaded by the foreigners, 
 the field has been entered by the "social settlement." 
 This remarkable movement, eliminating religious 
 propaganda, is essentially religious in its zeal for 
 social betterment. Its principal service has been to 
 raise up Americans who know and understand the 
 life and needs of the immigrants and can interpret 
 them to others. In the "institutional church" is 
 also to be found a similar adaptation of the more 
 strictly religious organization to the social and edu- 
 cational needs of the immigrants and their children. 
 
 More than any other class in the community, it 
 is the employers who determine the progress of the 
 foreigner and his children towards Americanization. 
 They control his waking hours, his conditions of liv- 
 ing, and his chances of advancement. In recent 
 years a few employers have begun to realize their 
 responsibilities, and a great corporation like the 
 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company establishes its 
 "sociological" department with its schools, kinder- 
 gartens, hospitals, recreation centres, and model 
 housing, on an equal footing with its engineering 
 and sales departments. Other employers are in- 
 teresting themselves in various degrees and ways in 
 "welfare work," or "industrial betterment," and 
 those who profit most by this awakening interest 
 219 
 
^l 
 
 RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 are the foreign-bom and their families. This interest 
 has not yet shown itself in a willingness to shorten 
 the hours of labor, and this phase of welfare work 
 must probably be brought about by other agencies. 
 
 The influence of schools, . churches, settlements, 
 and farming communities apphes more to the chil- 
 dren of immigrants than their parents. The immi- 
 grants themselves are too old for Americanization, 
 especially when they speak a non-English language. 
 To them the labor-union is at present the strongest 
 Americanizing force. The effort of organized labor 
 to organize the unskilled and the immigrant is the 
 largest and most significant fact of the labor move- 
 ment. Apart from the labor question itself, it means 
 the enlistment of a powerful self-interest in the Ameri- 
 canization of the foreign-bom. For it is not too 
 much to say that the only effective Americanizing force 
 for the Southeastern European is the labor-union. 
 The church to which he gives allegiance is the Roman 
 Catholic, and, however much the Catholic Church 
 may do for the ignorant peasant in his European 
 home, such instruction as the priest gives is hkely 
 to tend toward an acceptance of their subservient 
 position on the part of the workingmen. It is a 
 frequently observed fact that when immigrants join 
 a labor-union they almost insolently warn the priest 
 to keep his advice to himself. 
 
 Universal suffrage admits the immigrant to Ameri- 
 can politics within one to five years after landing. 
 But the suffrage is not looked upon to-day as the 
 220 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 sufficient Americanizing force that a preceding gen- 
 eration imagined. The suffrage appeals very differ- 
 ently to the immigrant voter and to the voter who has 
 come up through the American schools and American 
 life. The American has learned not only that this 
 is a free government, but that its freedom is based 
 on constitutional principles of an abstract nature. 
 Freedom of the press, trial by jury, separation of 
 powers, independence of the judiciary, equality of 
 opportunity, and several other governmental and 
 legal principles have percolated through his sub- 
 conscious self, and when he contemplates public 
 questions these abstract principles have more or less 
 influence as a guide to his ballot. But the immigrant 
 has none of these. He comes here solely to earn a 
 better living. The suffrage is nothing to him but a 
 means of livelihood. Not that he readily sells his 
 vote for money — rather does he simply "vote for 
 his job." He votes as instructed by his employer 
 or his political "boss," because it will help his em- 
 ployer's business or because his boss will get him a 
 job, or will, in some way, favor him and others of 
 his nationality. There is a noticeable difference 
 between the immigrant and the children of the immi- 
 grant in this regard. The young men, when they 
 begin to vote, can be appealed to on the ground of 
 public spirit; their fathers can be reached only on 
 the ground of private interest. 
 
 Now it cannot be expected that the labor-union 
 or any other influence will greatly change the immi- 
 
 221 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 grant in this' respect. But the union does this much: 
 it requires every member to be a citizen, or to have 
 declared his intention of taking out naturalization 
 papers. The reasons for doing this are not political; 
 they are sentimental and patriotic. The union 
 usually takes pride in showing that its members are 
 Americans, and have foregone allegiance to other 
 countries. In a union like the musicians' the reasons 
 for requiring citizenship are also protective, since 
 they serve to exclude transient musical immigrants 
 from American audiences. Again, the union frees 
 its members from the dictation of employers, bosses, 
 and priests. Pohticians, of course, strive to control 
 the vote of organized labor, but so disappointing has 
 been the experience of the unions that they have 
 quite generally come to distrust the leader who com- 
 bines labor and politics. The immigrant who votes 
 as a unionist has taken the first step, in casting his 
 ballot, towards considering the interests of others, 
 and this is also the first step towards giving public 
 spirit and abstract principles a place alongside pri- 
 vate interest and his own job. 
 
 But there is another way, even more impressive, 
 in which the union asserts the preeminence of prin- 
 ciples over immediate self-interest. When the for- 
 eigner from Southern Europe is inducted into the 
 union, then for the first time does he get the idea that 
 his job belongs to him by virtue of a right to work, 
 and not as the personal favor or whim of a boss. 
 These people are utterly obsequious before their fore- 
 
 222 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 men or bosses, and it is notorious that nearly always 
 they pay for the privilege of getting and keeping a 
 job. This bribery of bosses, as well as the padrone 
 system, proceed from the deep-seated conviction that 
 despotism is the natural social relation, and that 
 therefore they must make terms with the influential 
 superior who is so fortunate as to have favor with 
 the powers that be. 
 
 The anthracite coal operators represented such 
 men, prior to joining the union, as disciplined and 
 docile workmen, but in doing so they disregarded the 
 fact that outside the field where they were obsequious 
 they were most violent, treacherous, and factional. 
 Before the organization of the union in the coal fields 
 these foreigners were given over to the most bitter 
 and often murderous feuds among the ten or fifteen 
 nationalities and the two or three factions within 
 each nationality. The Polish worshippers of a given 
 saint would organize a night attack on the Polish 
 worshippers of another saint; the Italians from one 
 province would have a knife for the Italians of an- 
 other province, and so on. When the imion was 
 organized the antagonisms of race, religion, and fac- 
 tion were eliminated. The immigrants came down 
 to an economic basis and turned their forces against 
 their bosses. "We fellows killed this country," 
 said a Polish striker to Father Curran, " and now we 
 are going to make it." The sense of a common 
 cause, and, more than all else, the sense of indi- 
 vidual rights as men, have come to these people 
 223 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 through the organization of their labor unions, and it 
 could come in no other way, for the union appeals 
 to their necessities, while other forces appeal to their 
 prejudices. They are even yet far from ideal Ameri- 
 cans, but those who have hitherto imported them and 
 profited by their immigration should be the last to 
 cry out against the chief influence that has started 
 them on the way to true Americanism/ 
 
 Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants. — The 
 congestion and colonizing of immigrants in the cities 
 and their, consequent poverty and the deterioration 
 of the second generation have brought forth various 
 proposals for inducing them to settle upon the farms. 
 The commissioners of immigration^ at various times 
 have advocated an industrial museum at Ellis Island, 
 wherein the resources and opportunities of the sev- 
 eral states could be displayed before the eyes of the 
 incoming thousands. They and others have gone 
 further and advocated the creation of a bureau of 
 immigrant distribution to help the immigrants out 
 of the crowded cities into the country districts. Still 
 others have urged the establishment of steamship 
 lines to Southern ports and the Gulf of Mexico, 
 so that immigrants may be carried directly to the 
 regions that "need them." Very little can be ex- 
 pected from projects of this kind,' for the present con- 
 tingent of immigrants from Southeastern Europe is 
 
 ' See also Stewart and Huebner. 
 
 'Report, 1903, p. 60; 1904, p. 44; 1905, p. 58; 1906, p. 64. 
 'Industrial Commission, 15 : 492-646; 19 1971-977. 
 224 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 too poor in worldly goods and too ignorant of Ameri- 
 can business to warrant an experiment in the isola- 
 tion and self-dependence of farming. The farmers 
 of the South and West welcome the settler who has 
 means of purchase, but they distrust the newly arrived 
 immigrant. Scandinavians and Germans in large 
 numbers find their way to their countrymen on the 
 farms, but the newer nationalities would require the 
 fostering care of government or of wealthy private 
 societies. The Jews have, indeed, taken up the 
 matter, and the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial 
 Aid Society of New York, by means of subventions 
 from the Baron de Hirsch fund, has distributed 
 many families throughout the country, partly in 
 agriculture, but more generally in trade. The Society 
 for the Protection of Italian Immigrants is doing 
 similar work. Great railway systems and land com- 
 panies in the South and West have their agricultural 
 and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible 
 settlers. All of the Southern states have established 
 bureaus of immigration, and they are advertising 
 the North and Europe for desirable immigrants. 
 But these agencies seek mainly those immigrants 
 who have resided in the country for a time, and have 
 learned the language and American practices, and, 
 in the case of the railroad and land companies, those 
 who have accumulated some property. 
 
 The immigration bureaus of the Southern states 
 and railways, the most urgent applicants at the pres- 
 ent time for immigrants, are strongly opposed to the 
 
 Q 22S 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 plan of federal distribution. They want farmers 
 who will do their own work. From the standpoint 
 of the immigrant himself this position is correct. To 
 find a place as an agriculturist he must find a place as 
 a farmer and not a harvest hand.' Speaking for the 
 Southern bureaus, Professor Fleming says,^ "The 
 South decidedly objects to being made the govern- 
 ment dumping-ground for undesirable immigrants. 
 It does not want the lower class foreigners who have 
 swarmed into the Northern cities. It wants the same 
 sort of people who settled so much of the West." 
 The state board of South Carolina oflScially invites 
 immigration of "white citizens of the United States, 
 citizens of Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and 
 France, and all other foreigners of Saxon origin." 
 As for those without money who must depend on 
 their daily labor for wages, they must go where em- 
 ployment is most regular and the best wages are paid. 
 This is not on the farms, with a few months' work in 
 summer and no homes in winter. It is unmistakably 
 in the great cities and industrial centres. The com- 
 missioner of immigration at Ellis Island, speaking 
 of the cordon established by his bureau along the 
 Canadian frontier from HaUfax to Winnipeg in 
 order to catch those who tried to escape inspection 
 at New York, said, "All those immigrants who had 
 
 ' Tosti, Gustavo, "The Agricultural Possibilities of Italian 
 Immigration," Charities, May s, 1904, p. 472. 
 
 ' " Immigration to the Southern States," Political Science 
 Quarterly, 20 : 276 (1905). 
 
 226 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, or Cin- 
 cinnati in mind as a destination when they left Europe 
 and came to Quebec, went all the way around that 
 wall to its western end at Winnipeg, and then took 
 trains and came back to the very places they had 
 in mind when they left Europe ; and if you were to 
 land all the ships that now come to New York at 
 Galveston, New Orleans, or Charleston, every one of 
 the immigrants would come to the place he had in 
 mind when he decided to emigrate." ' 
 
 Professor Wilcox contends that the immigrants 
 already distribute themselves according to their eco- 
 nomic advantage as completely as do the natives. 
 They seem to congest in the cities because the cities 
 are necessarily their places of first arrival. "Our 
 foreign-bom arrive, in at least nine-tenths of the 
 cases, at some city. Our native citizens arrive by 
 birth, in at least three-fourths of the cases, in the 
 country. The foreign-bom arrive mainly at sea- 
 port cities, and disperse gradually from those cities 
 to and through other interior cities, ultimately 
 reaching in many cases the small towns or open coun- 
 try. It is in no sense surprising, or an evidence of 
 imperfect distribution, that the foreign-bom shoiild 
 be massed in the cities when nine-tenths of them ar- 
 rive there, and the native population massed in the 
 country districts when three-fourths of them arrive 
 there." ^ Artificial distribution would not relieve 
 
 '"Facts about Immigration," p. ii 
 'Ibid., p. 119. 
 
 227 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 the pressure as long as the character and amount of 
 immigration continue — it can only be relieved by 
 creating greater economic inducements in the country. 
 Natives and foreigners both crowd to the cities 
 because wages and profits are higher than they are 
 in the country. 
 
 Even supposing the congestion in the cities could 
 be relieved by making the inducements in the country 
 greater, the relief could not continue, for it would 
 only invite more immigration. Emigration has not 
 relieved the pressure of population in Europe. In 
 no period of their history, with the exception of Ire- 
 land, have the populations of Europe increased at 
 a greater rate than during the last half century of 
 migration to America. It is not emigration but im- 
 proved standards of living that lessens the pressure 
 of numbers, and France with the widest diffusion of 
 property has little emigration and no increase in 
 population. With the redundant millions of Eu- 
 rope, increasing thousands would migrate if they got 
 word from their friends that the American govern- 
 ment is finding jobs for them. Just as we have 
 already seen that the tide of immigration rises with 
 a period of prosperity in America, so would it rise 
 with agricultural distribution of immigrants. Both 
 are simply more openings for employment, and the 
 knowledge of such opportunities is promptly carried 
 to the waiting multitudes abroad. 
 
 Consider also the political jeopardy of an adminis- 
 tration at Washington conducting a bureau for the 
 228 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 distribution of immigrants. If it refused to direct 
 immigrants to one section of the country because it 
 found that the wages were low, it would arouse the 
 hostility of employers. If it directed them to another 
 section, where the wages offered were high because the 
 employers were preparing for a lockout, or the unions 
 were on strike, it would lose the votes of workingmen. 
 The administration would soon learn that safely 
 to conduct such a bureau it must not conduct it at all. 
 Far better is it that the federal government should 
 leave the distribution of immigrants to private em- 
 ployment agencies. It might then license all such 
 agencies that conduct an interstate business. With 
 the power to take away the license on proof of fraud 
 and misrepresentation, and with the prosecution of 
 agencies and employers that deceive and enslave the 
 immigrant, the government would accomplish all 
 that it could directly do for better distribution. Un- 
 questionably the employment agencies, with their 
 padroni, their bankers, and their false promises, 
 are the source of miserable abuse to thousands of 
 immigrants.* They require interstate as well as 
 state regulation. By weeding out the dishonest 
 agencies the field would be occupied by the honest 
 ones, and the immigrant could trust himself to their 
 assistance. But such regulation would not be merely 
 for the sake of the immigrant. It would, as it 
 should, aid the American as well. 
 
 * Kellor, "Out pf Wgrk," pp. 17, So-53. 7°; Charities, Feb. 6, 
 1904, p. 151, 
 
 ?2g 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 This suggests to us the true nature of the problem 
 of city congestion and the nature of its solution. 
 It is not to be found in special efforts on behalf of the 
 immigrant, but in efforts to better the condition of 
 both Americans and immigrants. The congestion 
 of cities is owing to discriminations in favor of cities. 
 If the government gives aid to agriculture as it does 
 to manufactures, if it provides better communication, 
 equahzes taxes, reduces freight rates to the level 
 enjoyed by cities, then agriculture and the small 
 towns will be more attractive. Americans will not 
 crowd to the cities, and the more provident of the 
 immigrants will find their way to the country. The 
 proposition of federal distribution of immigrants is 
 merely a clever illusion kept up to lead Congress 
 astray from the restriction of immigration. 
 
 Higher Standards of Immigration. — As for the 
 inferior, defective, and imdesirable classes of immi- 
 grants, there is no protection except stringent selec- 
 tion. The Commissioner of Immigration at New 
 York estimates that 200,000 of the million immigrants 
 in 1903 were an injury instead of a benefit to the in- 
 dustries of the country,' and he advocates a physical 
 examination and the exclusion of those who fall 
 below a certain physical standard. During the 
 past ten years the educational, or rather, illiteracy 
 test, has come to the front, and the advantages of this 
 test are its simplicity and its specific application to 
 those races whose standards are lowest. 
 ' Commissioner-General, 1903, p. 70. 
 230 
 
13 
 < 
 
 < 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 Much discussion has been carried on respecting 
 this test, and there has been considerable misunder- 
 standing and misrepresentation as to its probable 
 effects. The principal mistake has been the as- 
 sumption that it is designed to take the place of other 
 tests of admission, and that therefore it would per- 
 mit, for example, the most dangerous criminals — 
 those who are intelUgent — to enter this country. 
 If we examine existing laws, and seek to imderstand 
 the real nature of immigration restriction, we can see 
 the character of this mistake. All of our legislation 
 governing immigration should be described as im- 
 provement of immigration rather than restriction of 
 immigration. The object has always been to raise 
 the average character of those admitted by excluding 
 those who fall below certain standards. And higher 
 standards have been added from time to time as 
 rapidly as the lawmakers perceived the need of bet- 
 tering the quahty of our future citizenship. Although 
 in 1862 Congress had enacted a law prohibiting the 
 shipment of Chinese coohes in American vessels,' 
 it was not until 1875 that the lawmakers first awoke 
 to the evil of unrestricted immigration. In that year 
 a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prostitutes. 
 This law made an exception in favor of those who 
 had been convicted of pohtical offences. Next, in 
 1882, Congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and 
 Chinese. In 1885 laborers under contract were for 
 the first time to be excluded, but an exception was 
 ' Chapter 27, Laws of 1862. 
 231 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 made in order to admit actors, artists, lecturers, 
 singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new 
 industries. In 189 1 the list of ineligibles was again 
 extended so as to shut out not only convicts but per- 
 sons convicted of crime, also "assisted" immigrants, 
 polygamists, and persons with loathsome or danger- 
 ous contagious diseases. In 1903 the law added epi- 
 leptics, persons who have had two or more attacks 
 of insanity, professional beggars, and anarchists. 
 Notwithstanding these successive additions of ex- 
 cluded classes, the number of immigrants has con- 
 tinually increased until it is greater to-day than in 
 any preceding period, and while the standards have 
 been raised in one direction, the average quality 
 has been lowered in other directions. The educa- 
 tional and physical tests, while not needed for the 
 races from Northwestern Europe, are now advo- 
 cated as additions to the existing tests on account 
 of the flood of races from Southeastern Europe. 
 
 The question of "poor physique" has come seri- 
 ously to the front in recent reports of immigration 
 officials. The decline in the average of physical 
 make-up to which they call attention accompanies 
 the increase in numbers of Southern and Eastern 
 Europeans. While the commissioner at Ellis Island 
 estimates that 200,000 immigrants are below the 
 physical standards that should be required to entitle 
 them to admission, the number certified by the sur- 
 geons is much less than this. Yet nine-tenths of 
 even that smaller niunber are admitted, since the law 
 23a 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 excludes them only if other grounds of exclusion 
 appear. That the physical test is practicable is shown 
 by the following description of the qualities taken 
 into account by the medical examiners at the immi- 
 grant stations; qualities which would be made even 
 more definite if they were authorized to be acted 
 upon:* — 
 
 "A certificate of this nature implies that the alien 
 concerned is afflicted with a body not only but illy 
 adapted to the work necessary to earn his bread, but 
 also but poorly able to withstand the onslaught of 
 disease. It means that he is undersized, poorly 
 developed, with feeble heart action, arteries below 
 the standard size; that he is physically degenerate, 
 and as such not only unlikely to become a desirable 
 citizen, but also very likely to transmit his undesirable 
 qualities to his offspring should he, unfortunately 
 for the country in which he is domiciled, have any. 
 
 "Of all causes for rejection, outside of those for 
 dangerous, contagious, or loathsome diseases, or for 
 mental disease, that of 'poor physique' should re- 
 ceive the most weight, for in admitting such aliens 
 not only do we increase the number of public charges 
 by their inability to gain their bread through their 
 physical inaptitude and their low resistance to dis- 
 ease, but we admit likewise progenitors to this 
 country whose offspring will reproduce, often in an 
 exaggerated degree, the physical degeneracy of their 
 parents." 
 
 ' Commissioner-General, 1906, p. 62. 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 The history of the illiteracy test in Congress is 
 a curious comment on lobbying. First introduced 
 in 1895, it passed the House by a vote of 195 to 26, 
 and the Senate in another form by a vote of 52 to 10. 
 Referred to a conference committee, an identical 
 bill again passed both Houses by reduced majorities. 
 But irrelevant amendments had been tacked on and 
 the President vetoed it. The House passed it over 
 his veto by 193 to 37, but it was too late in the session 
 to reach a vote in the Senate. Introduced again in 
 1898, it passed the Senate by 45 to 28, but pressure 
 of the Spanish War prevented a vote in the House. 
 The bill came up in subsequent Congresses but did 
 not reach a vote.* The lobby is directed by the steam- 
 ship companies, supported by railway companies, 
 the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, and other 
 great employers of labor. By misrepresentation, these 
 interested agencies have been able at times to arouse 
 the fears of the older races of immigrants not affected 
 by the measure. Their fears were groundless, for the 
 illiteracy test is not a test of the English language, but 
 a test of any language, and it applies only to those 
 who are 15 years of age and over, but does not apply 
 to wife, children, parents, or grandparents of those 
 who are admitted. With these reasonable limita- 
 tions it would exclude only i in 200 of the Scandina- 
 vians, I in 100 of the English, Scotch, and Finns, 2 or 
 3 in 100 of the Germans, Irish, Welsh, and French ; 
 but it would exclude one-half of the South Italians, 
 • For details of the several measures, see Hall, "Immigration." 
 234 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 one-seventh of the North Italians, one-third to two- 
 fifths of the several Slav races, one-seventh of the 
 Russian Jews, altogether one-fifth or one-fourth of the 
 total immigration.' But these proportions would not 
 long continue. Elementary education is making 
 progress in Eastern and Southern Europe, and a test 
 of this kind would stimulate it still more among the 
 peasants. Restrictive at first, it is only selective; 
 it would not permanently reduce the number of im- 
 migrants, but would raise their level of intelligence 
 and their ability to take care of themselves. 
 
 The foregoing principles do not apply to Chinese 
 immigration. There the law is strictly one of exclu- 
 sion and not selection. This distinction is often 
 overlooked in the discussion of the subject. Re- 
 specting European, Japanese, and Korean immigra- 
 tion, the law admits all except certain classes definitely 
 described, such as paupers, criminals, and so on. 
 Respecting Chinese immigration the law excludes 
 all except certain classes described, such as teachers, 
 merchants, travellers, and students. In the case of 
 European immigration the burden of proof is upon 
 the immigration authorities to show that the immi- 
 grant should be excluded. In the case of the Chinese, 
 the burden of proof is on the immigrant to show that 
 he should be admitted. In the administration of the 
 law the difference is fundamental. If the Chinese 
 law is liberalized so as to admit doctors, lawyers, and 
 
 ' "Industrial Commission," 19 : 1001-1003. Hall, "Inrmigra- 
 ■tion." 
 
 ^25 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 other professional classes, against whom there is no 
 objection, it can be done in one of two ways. It can 
 name and specify the additional classes to be ad- 
 mitted. To this there is little objection, for it retains 
 the existing spirit of the law. Or it can be reversed, 
 and can admit all classes of Chinese except coolies, 
 laborers, and the classes now excluded by other laws. 
 If this were done, the enforcement of the law would 
 break down, for the burden of proof would be lifted 
 from the immigrant and placed on the examining 
 board; The law is with great difficulty enforced as 
 it is, but the evasions bear no comparison in niunber 
 with those practised under the other law. European 
 immigration is encouraged, provided it passes a 
 minimum standard. Chinese immigration is pro- 
 hibited unless it exceeds a maximum standard. One 
 is selection, the other is exclusion. One should be 
 amended by describing new classes not to be ad- 
 mitted, the other by describing classes which may 
 be admitted. 
 
 This difference between the two laws may be seen 
 in the effects of the restrictions which have from time 
 to time been added to the immigration laws. Each 
 additional ground of restriction or selection has not 
 decreased the total amount of immigration, nor has 
 it increased the proportion of those debarred from 
 admission. In 1898, 3200 aliens were sent back, and 
 this was 1.4 per cent of those who arrived. In 1901, 
 3900 were sent back, but this was only three-fourths 
 of I per cent of those arriving. In 1906, 13,000 sent 
 236 
 
AMALGAMATION AND ASSIMILATION 
 
 back were 1.2 per cent of the arrivals. Intending 
 immigrants as well as steamship companies learn the 
 standards of exclusion and the methods of evasion, 
 so that the proportion who take their chances and 
 fail in the attempt is very small. Nevertheless, this 
 deportation of immigrants, though averaging less 
 than I per cent, is a hardship that should be avoided. 
 It has often been proposed that this should be done 
 through examination abroad by American consuls 
 or by agents of the Immigration Bureau. Attractive 
 and humane as this proposal appears, the foreign 
 examination could not be made final. It would re- 
 move the examiners from effective control, and would 
 require a large additional force as well as the existing 
 estabUshment to deport those who might evade the 
 foreign inspection. It does not strike at the root of 
 the evil, which is the business energy of the steamship 
 companies in soliciting immigration, and their busi- 
 ness caution in requiring doubtful immigrants to give 
 bonds in advance to cover the cost of carrying them 
 back.' It is not the exclusion law that causes hard- 
 ship, but the steamship companies that connive at 
 evasions of the law. The law of 1903 for the first 
 time adopted the correct principle to meet this eva- 
 sion, but with a limited application. Since 1898, 
 the Bureau had debarred increasing numbers on 
 account of loathsome and contagious diseases. But 
 these had already done the injury which their dep- 
 ortation was designed to prevent. In the crowded 
 ■ Commissioner-General, 1904, p. 41. 
 237 
 
RACES AND IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA 
 
 steerage the entire shipload was exposed to this con- 
 tagion. Congress then enacted the law of 1903, not 
 only requiring the steamship companies to carry them 
 back, as before, but requiring the companies to pay 
 a fine of $100 for every alien debarred on that ac- 
 count. In 1906, the companies paid fines of $24,300 
 on 243 such deportations. The principle should be 
 extended to all classes excluded by law, and the fine 
 should be raised to $500. Then every agent of the 
 steamship companies in the remotest hamlets of 
 Europe would be an immigration inspector. Their 
 surgeons and officials already know the law and its 
 standards of administration as thoroughly as the 
 immigration officials. It only needs an adequate 
 motive to make them co operators with the Bureau 
 instead of evaders of the law. Already the law of 
 1903 has partly had that effect. One steamship 
 company has arranged with the Bureau to locate 
 medical officers at its foreign ports of embarkation. 
 However, the penalty is not yet heavy enough, and 
 the Commissioner-General recommends its increase 
 to $500. By extending the law to all groimds of 
 deportation in addition to contagious diseases, the 
 true source of hardship to debarred aliens will be 
 dried up.' 
 
 'The National Immigration Conference, December 8, 1905, 
 adopted the following resolution : "That the penalty of $100, now 
 imposed on the steamship companies for bringing diseased per- 
 sons to the United States, be also imposed for bringing in any 
 person excluded by law." National Civic Federation Review, 
 January, 1906, p. 19. 
 
 238 
 
INDEX 
 
 Advertising, 26, 29, 84, 85, 104, 108,' 
 
 109. 
 ■s Age Composition of Immigrants, 
 
 119. 
 Agriculture, 130, 131, 132, 133. 
 — Alien Contract Labor Law, 118. 
 American Federation of Labor, 
 
 144. 
 Americanization, 208. 
 Armenians, 65, 99. 
 Asiatic Immigration, 101-104. 
 Assimilation, 17-21, 113, 198. 
 Atlanta University, 58, 59, 61. 
 Australia, 6, 19. 
 Austria-Hungary, 18, 65, 79-87. 
 
 B 
 
 Births, 57, 86, 94. 
 Bohemians, 80, 82, 132. 
 Boston, 203, 215. 
 Brinton, Daniel G., 212. 
 Burlingame Treaty, in. 
 Butcher Workmen, 150. 
 
 California, loi, 103, 117. 
 
 Canada, 104. (See " French Cana- 
 dians.") 
 
 Carib, 106. 
 'Castes, 8. 
 
 Charity, 108. ~ 
 
 Charity Organization Society of 
 New York, 100. 
 
 Chicago, 47, no, 165, 178. 
 
 Child Labor, 152. 
 
 Chinese, loi, 109, III, 114, 117, 
 
 130, 131, 132, 143, 144, 146, 156, 
 
 231. (See " Coolies.") 
 Chinese Exclusion, 117, 152, 
 
 ass- 
 Cities, 54, ss, 164, i6s, i66, 
 
 215- 
 
 Civil War, 3, 63, 64, 98, in, 129, 
 
 175- 
 Classes in America, 8, 12, 
 Closed Shop, 205. 
 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 
 
 150, 219, 
 Colored Farmers' Alliance, 50. 
 Competition, Race, 113, 114, 115, 
 
 116, 117, 148, 149, 151, 153, 204, 
 
 208. 
 Contract Labor, 99, 102, 104, 108, 
 
 109, no, 118, 135, 138, 141, 142, 
 
 143, 231. (See " Coolies," 
 
 " Peonage.") 
 Coolies, 109, 152. (See "Chinese," 
 
 " Japanese.") 
 Codperation, 49, 50, 
 Cost of Living, 73. (See also 
 
 " Standard of Living.") 
 Crime, 26, 168-175. 
 Croatians, 80, 81, 83, 84, 109, 122, 
 
 123. 
 Curran, Father, 223, 
 
 Death-rate, 58, 60, 61, 86, 95. (See 
 
 " Infant Mortality.") 
 Distribution of Immigrants, 130, 
 
 224-230, 
 
 239 
 
INDEX 
 
 Drunkenness, 172. 
 
 Dutch, 24, 88, 89, 123. 
 
 Dutch East India Company, 108. ~- 
 
 E 
 
 Education, 45, 46, 52, 146, 214. 
 
 (See " Illiteracy.") 
 Educational Tests, 44, 45, 52, 194, 
 
 231, 232, 234. (See " Negro.") 
 Eminence of Races in America, 
 
 23-27. 31. 32. 
 Employment Agencies, 229. 
 English Race, 17, 23, 25, 128. 
 Erie Canal, 130. 
 
 Fifteenth Amendment to the 
 
 Constitution, 42, 44, 18S. 
 Filipinos, 140, 142, 143, 144, 
 Finns, 95-97. 
 
 Fleming, Professor W. L., 226. 
 Fourteenth Amendment to the 
 
 Constitution, 42, 44, 45. 
 French, 25, 128. 
 French Canadians, 25, 97, isiy 
 
 199. 
 
 Galicia, 93. (See also "Austria- 
 Hungary.") 
 
 Germans, 24, 30, 65, 67-68, 84, 122, 
 132, 152. 
 
 Greeks, 47, 122. 
 
 H 
 
 Hampton Institute, 49. ^ 
 
 Hawaii, 99, loi, 102, 103, 105, 131, 
 132, 142, 196. 
 
 Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Associa- 
 tion, 234. 
 
 Heredity, 5. 
 
 Hoffman, Fred L., SS. 57- 
 
 Huguenots, 24-25. 
 
 Illiteracy, 76, 79, 194. 
 
 Immigration, 22-38, 63-106. 
 
 Immigration Bureaus, 225, 237. 
 
 Incentives to Immigration, 27-31, 
 63-68, 72, 76, 77, 80, 84-87, 88, 95, 
 96, 99, 100, lor, 107, 108. 
 
 India, 9, 10, 103, 141, 142, 
 
 Indigenous Races, 104. 
 
 Industrial Capacity of Races, 127- 
 
 134- 
 Industrial Education, 46, 47, 48. 
 
 (See " Negro.") 
 Industrial Prosperity and Depres- 
 sion, 63, 68, 72, 157. 
 Infant Mortality, 60, 62, 87. (See 
 
 " Death-rate.") 
 Initiative and Referendum, 1S5-187. 
 Irish, 24, 34, 65, 66, 67, 122, 151, 
 
 153. 204. 205. 
 Italians, 70-79, 109, 122, 123, 127, 
 
 130, 132, 140, 141, 146, 147, 151, 
 
 152. 153- 
 
 J 
 
 Japanese, loi, 102, 109, 114, 130, 
 
 131, 132. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, I, 
 Jenks, J. W., 142. 
 Jews, 65, 81, 83, 87-95, i^Si 122, 
 
 123, 127, 132, 133, 152, 153, 164. 
 
 K 
 
 Kelsey, Carl, 54, 55. 
 Knights of Labor, 118. 
 Knownothings, 117, 173, 
 Koreans, 103. 
 Kuczynski, R. R., 198, 207. 
 
 Labor, 124, 125, 126, 131, 134-159. 
 (See " Wage Earners," " Trade 
 Unions.") 
 
 240 
 
INDEX 
 
 Labor, Department of, 177, 178. 
 Landlordism, 64, 66, 72, 85, 87, 
 
 180. 
 Languages, 20, 94, 97. 
 Law, John, 108. 
 Leadership, 52. 
 Legislation, in, 117, 118, 136, 231, 
 
 234, 236. 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 43, 213. 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 22-25, 
 Longshoremen, 130. X 
 
 M 
 
 Machinery, 125, 156. 
 Magyars, 81, 82, 83, 84, 123. 
 Malay Races, 140, 142. 
 MaUock, W. H., 179. 
 Marriage, 203. 
 Mexicans, 132. 
 Military Duties, 75. 
 Miners, 129, 130, 150, 154. 
 Mob Violence, 173, 174, 173. 
 Molly Maguires, 129. 
 Morality, 61, 62, 204. (See " Pros- 
 titution.") ^ 
 Miinsterberg, Hugo, 179. 
 
 N 
 
 '■' Naturalization, iii, 188, 189, 190, 
 
 194. 
 *■*■ Negro, 3, 12, 16, 39-62, 106, 108, 
 112, 113, 114, 136, 137, 139, 140, 
 147, 172, 209. 
 New York, 164, 214, 215. ^ 
 
 Norwegians, 164. (See "Scandi- 
 navians.") 
 
 Padroni, 102, 103, 109, 118, 229. 
 " Pale of Settlement," 91. 
 Penn, William, 29, 108. 
 Pennsylvania, 29, 30, 31. 
 Peonage, 13s, 136, 137, 138, 139, 
 
 141. 
 Philippine Commission, 144. 
 
 Philippine Islands, 106, 141, 179, 
 180. 
 
 Poles, 83, 123, 152. 
 
 Political Boss, The, 182. 
 
 Political Exiles, 68. 
 
 Population, 53-58, 76, 157, 160. 
 (See " Births " and " Death- 
 rates.") 
 
 Porto Rico, 106, 218. 
 
 Portuguese, 98, 152. 
 
 Poverty and Pauperism, 26, 66, 76, 
 167. 17S-178. 
 
 Primaries, Direct, 185. 
 
 Profits, 108, 155. 
 
 Prohibition, 173. 
 
 Proportional Representation, 184. 
 
 Prostitution, 57. 
 
 Protective Tariff, 158. 
 
 Quakers, 28, 29. 
 
 Race Problem, 4, 8, 40, 42, 43, 44, 
 
 113. (See " Negro.") 
 Races, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12-17, 87, 88, 104- 
 
 106, 108, 211. (See individual 
 
 name of race.) 
 Race Suicide, Ig8, 200. 
 Railroads, 130, 156, 225. 
 Reconstruction, 43, 50. 
 Religion, 28, 186, 217-219. (See 
 
 " Incentives to Immigration.") 
 Restriction of Immigration, 116 n., 
 
 117, 118, 175, 230, 231. 
 Ripley, W. Z., 95. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 201, 206. 
 Rosenberg, Edward, 144. 
 Roumanians, 83, 84, 123. 
 Russia, 87, 92, 93, 132. 
 Ruthenians, 80, 83, 123. 
 
 Scandinavians, 24, 132, 152, (See 
 " Norwegians.") 
 
 241 
 
INDEX 
 
 151. 
 
 160-178, 
 
 ' Births," 
 
 \ 
 
 Scotch Irish, 23-24, 31-38, 128, 
 
 151. (See " Irish.") 
 Self-government, a-4, 42, 43, 49, 53. 
 Seymour, Governor Horatio, 29. 
 Shaler, Professor N. S,, 10. 
 Slavs, 14, 65, 80, 82, 83, 152. 
 Slovaks, 81, 83, 151. 
 Social Settlements, 219. 
 Socialism, 181. 
 Spaniards, 128. 
 Standard of Living, 112, 115 
 
 153. 208. 
 Statistics, 119, 130, 158, 
 
 198. (See " Population,' 
 
 " Death-rate.") 
 Steamship Lines, 84, 85, 107, no, 
 
 237, 238. 
 Stone, A. H., 147. 
 Strikes, 102, 149. 
 Suffrage, 2, 42, 43, 44, 51, 52, 117, 
 
 182, 183, 18S, 220. (See also 
 
 " Educational Tests.") 
 Sweatshops, 115, 133, 148. 
 Swedes, 47. 
 Syrians, 99, 151. 
 
 Taft, Governor, 143. 
 Taxation, 74, 75, 84, 86. 
 Temporary Immigration, 77, 98, 
 
 loi. 
 Test Act, 35. 
 
 ' Thirteenth Amendment to the 
 Constitution, 42. 
 Trade Unions, 50, 51, 115, 129, 149, 
 
 150, 152, 154, 205, 220, 221, 222, 
 
 223, 224. (See " Labor" and 
 
 "Wage Earners.") 
 Triple Alliance, 75. 
 Tuskegee Institute, 49. 
 
 U 
 
 United Garment Workers of Amer- 
 ica, 115 n., 150. 
 
 United Hebrew Charities of New 
 York, 167. 
 
 United Mine Workers of America, 
 ISO. 
 
 W 
 
 Wage Earners, ui-118, 157. (See 
 " Labor. ") 
 
 Wages, 112, 113, 129, 140, 148, 152, 
 IS3. iSS. 157. 159- (See "Labor.") 
 
 Wage System, The, 147. 
 
 Walker, Francis A., 198, 200, 
 207. 
 
 Watson, Elkanah, 200. 
 
 Weahh Production and Immigra- 
 tion, 119, 159. 
 
 Welfare Work, 219. 
 
 Wilcox, Professor, 227. 
 
 242 
 
POVERTY 
 
 By ROBERT HUNTER 
 
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