T*u pper, k , 6. N. AMES. Immigration AND Christianity, Immigration and Christianity. AN ADDRESS, Delivered without Notes by Rev. Dr. Kerr B. Tupper, Pastor First Baptist Church, Denver, before the American Baptist Home Mission Society, at the Bap- tist National Anniversaries, Pike's Opera House, Cin- cinnati, May 2i, 1891. A recent popular writer has clearly point- ed out, by an intelligent survey of the cen- turies, that emigration and immigration, as we conceive of them to-day, are phenomena of modern life ; that although there have been, in every period of human history, mi- grations of men, it is only in the last years of the world's life that this migratory im- pulse has assumed a systematic and well- organized shape. Especially is it true that migration into America, in anything like large numbers, is a feature of the present century of our Christian era. It was only in 1820 that the United States of America opened its official immigration records. WHAT A HOST ! And yet during the time that has elapsed batween 1820 and 1891, a period comprising two-thirds of a century, the most progres- sive and marvelous the world has ever known, what a host of men and women 3 from other lands have flocked to our shores ! In so vast numbers have these come that to- day, according to the most reliable statistics, our foreign-born population and their off- spring among us are no fewer than 21,385,- 000 souls, or more than 33 per cent, of our total population. From European countries alone there have been received by us, within this time, about 1 1 ,000,000, of whom 8,000,000 have arrived during the last thirty years, 5,000,000 since 1880, and 2,666,000 since 1885. That mighty race instinct, which, in the fifth cen- tury, led the Saxon tribes to England, and, in the ninth century, . the Norsemen to France, and, in the tenth century, the Danes to Scottish-Northumbria, as in later days the great Oriental Nations to Europe across the Balkan and the Hellespont, has, in this nineteenth century of enlightenment and progress, impelled European and Asiatic people to the fuller, freer, more glorious civilization on this side of the Atlantic. These millions from abroad, now driven by the expellent influences of the Old World, now drawn by the attractive influences of our new Continent, have come from every direction — from volatile France and over- taxed Italy, from sturdy Germany and rest- less England, from substantial Scandinavia and oppressed Ireland, from socialistic Aus- tria, and Nihilistic Russia, from progressive Japan and conservative China — an ever-in- creasing and irresistible army, mightier than Henry Clay dreamed of when, standing on the 4 Allegheny heights, he was led to exclaim, pro- phetically, "I hear the tread of coming mil- lions !" and, on the basis of past increase, an eminent statistician reckons that our foreign population at the beginning of the twentieth century, just ten years in the future, will not be fewer than 43,000,000 souls. From 1820 to 1830 we received not more than 12,000 annually; in 1830-1835 the number increased to an average of 17,000 a year; in 1842, to 100,000; in 1854, to 427,833; in 1872, to 437,- 750; while in 1882 the annual immigration was 810,187. In 1887 there came to us from abroad 516,933 persons; in 1888, 525,019; in 1890, 453,302. Of the 16,000,000 foreigners who have landed at our sea-ports in the last seventy years, more than one-half have arrived during the last twenty years. WHO ARE THESE ? Of these 16,000,000 — to give the figures of another — 3,387,279 came from Ireland; 1 ,529,- 792 from England and Wales; 312,924 from Scotland; 4,359.121 from Germany; 857,083 from Norway and Sweden; 127,642 from Denmark; 357,333 from France; 160,201 from Switzerland, and 320,796 from Italy. In our republic to-day we have nearly twice as many Irishmen as there are at present in all Ireland; 1 Norwegian for every 3 in Nor- way; 1 Swede for every 5 in Sweden, and 1 Dane for every 8 in Denmark. In 1880 there were 44,230 Italians on our shore; in 1890 5 this number had grown to 307,310, while during the month of March, just passed, notwithstanding our stricter immigration laws, the number of these people — and who can say how many among them are in sym pathy with the creed and deed of the base Mafia organizations? — exceeded that of any previous month in the history of our conti- nent. Of the 2,105 immigrants that landed on yesterday at New York port, 1,423, this morning's dispatches tell us, are reported as Italians, while 35 Italians were barred from landing because of being ex-convicts, or likely to become public charities. Such as these are making America the world's degraded dumping-ground. From Hun- gary, in 1890, we received 22,000 as against 11,000 in 1889; from Poland 11,073 as against 4,922; from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, exclusive of Bohemians, 29,611 as against 20,122. In 1889 there were 427,000 immi- grants to the United States; in 1890, 453,302, of whom 443,225 were Europeans in the fol- lowing proportions: Germans, 92,427; Eng- lish, 57,020; Irish, 53,024; Italians, 52,003; Swedes, 29,632; Scotch, 12,041; Norwe- gians, 11,370; Danes, 9,366; Swiss, 6,993; French, 6,585; not specified, 112,764; total Europeans, 443,225; all others, 12,007. Dur- ing the last ten years the influx from abroad into our country exceeds the number of the population of Holland or Belgium, of Nor- way or Sweden, of Greece or Switzerland. During the last eight months 264,065 immi- 6 grants have entered into American ports, as against 218,653 m the corresponding period of last year. During the past month 60,449 foreigners landed at Castle Garden (while in April of last year there were but 49,184), which is the highest number for any April since 1882, during which year we were in- vaded by a foreign host of 810,187. IN OUR CITIES. Now, through this almost unrestricted in- flux, it appears as if our American cities, themselves the very nerve-centers of our National life, would cease to be American. Those best acquainted with the subject tell us that 34 per cent, of the persons of foreign birth now in the United States are to be found in our cities. Thus : Of the Irish, 45 per cent.; of Germans, 38 per cent.; of Eng- lish and Scotch, 30 per cent.; of Italians, 40 per cent. Eighty per cent, of the total pop- ulation of New York City is constituted of foreigners, by birth or parentage. One- third of the population of New York City, and one-fourth of the population of Boston, are Irish. The former city has more Roman Catholics than Vienna, and Vienna has more than 600,000 of this priest-ridden peo- ple. Of the 172,756 votes recently cast at an election in Chicago, 88,509 are reported as being given by naturalized citizens, as follows : Germans, 33,002 ; Irish, 20,253 ; Swede, 6,804 ; English, 5,620 ; Canadians, 7 4.402; Bohemians, 3,447; Norwegians, 2,998; Poles, 2,774; Scotch, 1,810; Austrians, 1,507; Danes, 1,267; Russians, 960; Hollanders, 91 1 ; Italians, 686; Swiss, 688; French, 547; Hun- garians, 169; and others, 402. The foreign element in St. Louis, by birth and parentage, is 13 per cent.; in Detroit, 15; in Cincinnati, 18; in Milwaukee, 27. Is there not basis for the fear expressed by Dr. Strong that our cities are fast becoming miniature Europes, with a little Ireland here, a little Germany there, a little Italy yonder ? So much for immigration numerically. IN THE WEST. A second fact of intimate relationship to the work of the Society whose anniversary we celebrate to-day : The vast number of this foreign host migrate toward the setting sun. About fifty-five per cent, of our immi- grants, it is estimated, journey westward, thus freshly and forcefully illustrating Bishop Berkley's poetic apothegm, penned in view of the swing of sceptre from Persia to Greece, from Greece to Italy, from Italy to Britain, and from Britain to America. Now it is from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast of North America. In 1887, 371,619 immigrants landed at Boston and New York, of whom 24,510 declared their intention to live in New England and 4,651 to go South, while 336,554 contemplated settlement in the Middle and Western States. In seven of the Western States— Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Mis- 8 souri, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — there may be found to-day, in round num. bers, 800,000 Germans, 600,000 Poles, 290,000 Swedes, 152,000 Norwegians and 85,000 Danes. Of the 1,800,000 Scandinavians in America, 900,000 were born in Norway, Denmark and Sweden ; and these foreigners alone, with their offspring, constitute more than one-third of the people of Minnesota and Dakota, one-sixth of the people of the whole West, and one-thirtieth of our entire American population. THEIR INFLUENCE HERE. A third fact, of more importance still : This large and increasing immigration from Asiatic nations and Continental Europe, so greatly moulding the formative character of our new West, does not, in a multitude of cases, add to, but, on the other hand, in a large measure sadly detracts from the higher prosperity of our Republic. Of course, here we must discriminate. In many instances those who come to us from abroad are, we gladly acknowledge, enterprising, helpful citizens, men and women in full sympathy with our free institutions and the funda- mental ideas upon which our national edi- fice has been reared and desiring to aid us in the propagation and establishment of a pure Christianity and an enlightened civiliza- tion, thus proving themselves potent ele- ments in the protection of our Government 9 and in the preservation of our morals. We welcome all such, rejoiced that true repre- sentatives of every nation may find on our shores a safe asylum and an impartial justice. What we want is not America for Ameri- cans, but Americans for America. As an- other puts it, it is not birth, nor language, nor complexion that constitutes a person an alien as distinguished from an American, but the attitude of such a person toward the Government and people of the United States. But of this desirable class, it must be con- fessed, are not the great mass of immigrants who seek in America a new home. To the best interests of our Republic they are a hin- drance rather than a help, a curse rather than a blessing. Many of these are paupers ; more of them are criminals. In his recent report to the Secretary of the Treasury, Sur- geon-General Hamilton declares that "there is no country in the world in which citizen- ship is so cheaply obtained as in the United States," and brings to attention the fact that of the fifteen insane persons and eleven idiots reported on a given occasion by the medical officer at New York, four of the idiots and all of the insane were allowed to land ; and that while only 3,360 men skilled in the professions and 59,985 skilled laborers came into our country last year, there were among the immigrants about 300,000 com- mon laborers and "miscellaneous." In Dorchester's "Problem of Religious Pro- 10 gress " we are told, and doubtless correctly, that seventy-four per cent, of the Irish dis- charged convicts have found their way to America. IMMIGRATION AND CRIME. A study of our criminal records reveals facts that are startling in the extreme. Con- sider such as these : The number of men and women in our American penitentiaries in 1890 was about 10,000 larger than that of our convicts in 1880, and the convictions for crime in 1890 exceeded those in 1880 by n,- 741. In 1850, with our population of 23,000,- 000, fewer than 7,000 convicts were in our jails and penitentiaries; in i860, with our population of 31,000,000, the number had in- creased to 19,000; in 1870, with our popula- tion of 38,000,000, we had 32,000 prisoners ; in 1880, with our population of 50,000,000, we had 58,000 prisoners ; and there is reason to fear that when all the returns for 1890 are in, we shall have revealed the awful condition of things which shows about 75,000 convict- ed criminals among a population of about 63,000,000. Most painfully significant is all this, in connection with our so-called free and glorious American nation, when we re- call the fact that the criminal convictions in England were 9,348 in 1889, as against 15,037 in 1868 ; in Scotland, 1,703, as against 2,439; and in Ireland, 1,310, as against 3,026. How do we account for this large increase of crime in America ? Let Prof. Boyeson— 1 1 himself a foreigner — answer our question in a few sentences from his calm, conserva- tive address before the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in Washington in 1887: "Recent statistics prove that our im- migration is being drawn from lower and lower strata of European society. Formerly we received the majority of our Italian im- migration from Parma and the northern Provinces — Piedmont, Tuscany and Lom- bardy — where the people, as a rule, are self- respecting and industrious ; but during re- cent years Naples and the Province of Sicily have taken the lead and poured down upon us a torrent of peanut venders and organ- grinders. Since 1880 the Italians have nearly trebled their numbers, and the Bohemians, Poles and Hungarians have powerfully re- inforced and are daily reinforcing our grow- ing army of discontent and disorder, as they import all sorts of notions — religious, irreli- gious, anarchic, socialistic, nihilistic. They have but little regard for the Sabbath, almost no knowledge of and less reverence for the Bible, and are totally ignorant of the Anglo- American ideas of civil liberty and spiritual religion." Consonant with this sentiment is the testi- mony of Prof. James Bryce also, in his mas- terful "American Commonwealth," in which he declares that these immigrants are, in many cases, ignorant of our country, our statesmen and our political issues, and affirms that to let such become citizens is 1 2 to make a foolish sacrifice of common sense to abstract principles. It is not sur- prising- that one of the most gifted editors of our land should have given expression last month, after the disgraceful crimes of Italians in Louisiana's beautiful metropo- lis, to the generally recognized thought that thousands and thousands of this vast total of immigrants are " men and women un- desirable from every point of view"; low in the scale, "social and intellectual, with- out the slightest comprehension of repub- lican government, familiar only with the habits and thoughts of the abject subject of a despotism, destitute of resources and strangers to lofty ambition. No won- der that skepticism, Mormonism, Roman- ism, socialism, nihilism, illiteracy, intem- perance, Sabbath desecration, each nour- ished and strengthened by the miserable and misery-creating elements from abroad, , menace the free institutions of our land and threaten the very life of our National Gov- ernment and our God-given religion. No wonder that in the presence of all the cor- rupt and corrupting influences from distant lands (Mafia organizations in New Orleans, anarchical revolutionists in Chicago, and communistic insurrectionists in Pennsyl- vania), one of the dominant questions be- fore us to-day — a question arresting the at- tention and demanding the consideration of every patriot that loves his country, and every philanthropist that loves his fellow, 13 and every Christian that loves his God — is this : How shall we Americanize these heterogeneous and discordant elements be- fore they foreignize us ? How Christianize them before they demoralize us ? How save them before they sink us ? AN ABSORBING QUESTION. Important, absorbing question this before our Republic to-day. Phillips Brooks ut- tered just last week sentiments which it were well to have engraved on the heart and memory of American citizens. May I be permitted to quote them in full ? Says he : "No nation, as no man, has a right to take possession of a choice bit of God's earth, to exclude the foreigner from its territory, that it may live more comfortably and be a little more at peace. * But if to this particular na- tion there has been given the development of a certain part of God's earth for universal purposes ; if the world, in the great march of centuries, is going to be richer for the de- velopment of a certain national character, built up by a larger type of manhood here, then for the world's sake, for the sake of every nation that would pour in upon that which would disturb that development, we have a right to stand guard over it. We are to develop here in America a type or na- tional character, we believe, for which the world is to be richer always. It may be the last great experiment for God's wandering 14 humanity upon earth. We have a right to stand guard over the conditions of that ex- periment, letting nothing interfere with it, drawing into it the richness that is to come by the entrance of many men from many nations, and they in sympathy with our Con- stitution and laws." And how, we ask, is this desired end to be accomplished ? To this supreme query of our American Government there is, it seems to me, but one well-founded, satisfactory answer. It is this : The im- migration problem can never be solved, these foreign elements, by nature and by education antagonistic to our civilization, can never be controlled, this mighty influx that threatens the integrity of our free insti- tutions can never be turned into channels safe and salutary except through the omnific power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who is both Sovereign and Saviour — that Gospel which, in Talleyrand's day, and according to his own admission, made Geneva the grain of musk that perfumed all Europe. Much, I grant, may be accomplished toward the settle- ment of this question by wise legislation, now levying a per caput tax large enough to work the desired end, now staying the extravagant grant of public lands, now barring out more rigidly and effectually from our shores pauper and criminal classes, now demanding that each immigrant give evidence, through some reliable representative, of his genuine sym- pathy with our national civilization, as weh 15 as prove his intelligence by an ability to read and write in bis native tongue ; more maybe done by just, firm, heroic legal measures which shall duly punish all from abroad, as all born at home, who shall break our laws ; more still may be wrought through the agency of our free school system and popular educa- tion, with its elevating and ennobling influ- ences ; but each of these, as all of these combined, is insufficient, because remedies local, external, evanescent, touching only the surface of life, while that which human- ity demands for its essential amelioration, individual and national, is some mighty, majestic, permeating, permanent principle which is internal and motive-producing — "some supreme energy descending from the heights of the creative and Kingly au- thority that resides in heaven." Believe me, men and women, fathers and brethren, this mighty mass of heterogeneous material can never be solidified and unified, naturalized and Americanized, saved and made safe, ex- cept through the genial yet powerful influ- ences of the regenerating and reforming principles of the Prophet of Nazareth. Not through immigration laws, however just they may be, nor through our public schools and our colleges, however well equipped, nor through any other agency of association looking toward social and educational ele- vation, but through the Gospel alone. Evan- gelization is the only salvation. All exter- nal means are powerless save as they are 16 permeated and animated, sustained and guided by the Gospel of Christ. Reading this morning's paper, a few hours ago, I saw the statement that while it requires 100,000 troops to keep Paris in order, 3,000 troops suffice for London, a city twice the size Of Paris. And why ? Because while the peo- ple of the former city have flung away from heart and life the words of the mighty Mas- ter of the ages, the Queen of the latter peo- ple proudly takes up and holds up before a pagan Ambassador the Word of Life, and says, with reverence: "This Bible is the secret of England's greatness and England's glory." And realizing that the only hope of our nation in these critical periods is the Gospel, our noble Home Mission Society is devot- ing its mightiest, most consecrated energies for the dissemination all over our country of the truth as it is in Jesus. As Helena, the queen-mother, when searching for the true Cross on Golgotha, arranged a line of bea- cons from Jerusalem to Constantinople, and bade the watchers light the resinous gum when the holy wood should be found, so our Society is marshalling its forces as never before to seek, not in Jerusalem die decay- ing wood, but in America the everlasting glory of the Redeemer's Cross, that His glory might shine with effulgence divine among all the unchurched people of our Eastern States and all the churchless people of our Western territory, until the broad do- 17 main of our American Republic shall be full of the light of Jehovah, beautified with the resplendent beams of the Sun of Righteous- ness. And in two ways, let me emphasize in conclusion, does this Gospel of the Son of God meet the question before us in connec- tion with our foreign population : THE PERSONAL METHOD. First, by the personal regeneration, the moral elevation and the spiritual culture of these diverse and naturally diverging ele- ments. Macaulay, not fifty years ago, pre- dicted that as in the ages past fell ancient Assyria and queenly Persia, and scholarly Greece and majestic Rome, so in the twen- tieth century would fall our blood-bought and blood-consecrated Republic ; that through the usurpation of some modern Caesar or Napoleon, or by the inroads of some modern Goths and Vandals, the owls and bats of ruin would, in the coming cen tury, brood over the mutilated and demol ished magnificence of our national Capital, and the bards of succeeding time sing the sad story of the decline and fall of the American Commonwealth. The prediction, I believe, will be unfulfilled. Our land shall long stand as an arena of Jehovah's mighti- est efforts in these ends of the earth in be- half of the human race. But let us realize this, that our only safety from this tremendous ca- 18 lamity is fidelity to God and to His eternal Word, fearless and constant emphasis upon and illustration of personal repentance, per- sonal faith, personal regeneration. In His divine government, intelligently declares a Christian journal which I was reading this very hour, Christ reconstructed society by regulating men's hearts, teaching that the only way to secure better conditions is to get better people, since if the units are right the masses cannot fail to be right. And so our Lord emphasized and reiterated indi- vidual, personal, conscious regeneration through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. He knew that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, that righteousness alone is the palladium of empire or republic. Not law nor literature, not art nor armies, not poetry nor philosophy, not revenue nor rea- son, but truth, integrity, honor — personal, inalienable, incorruptible, untransmissible — and these crowned by the favor of Him who sitteth in the broad circle of national life and swayeth his sceptre over the children of men. The salvation of a nation depends upon the salvation of the units composing it, and these units the Gospel can make of men who gladly place principle above party, religion above revenue, morality above money, and character above circumstance — " Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking." As the Roman Empire was conquered by 19 Christianity, as one by one men and women out of that Empire became sons of God and heirs of immortality — now a mantua-maker and now a jailer, now a Dionysius and now a Damaris — so also must America be re- deemed and her heterogeneous masses of people be saved. The personal .method of Jesus Christ, not the national method of Con- stantine, or of Charlemagne, or of Xavier, is the true and effective method. By it, and it alone, shall our American Sabbath be re- stored, the monster Mormon crushed, the infamous traffic in liquors annihilated, out- marriage laws made more pure and inviola- bla, immigration met at the very threshold with ennobling influences, the mighty and growing revolutions of anarchists, com- munists and nihilists controlled, and our whole Government, lifted to an exalted height of social and national honor, be made, as far as practicable, "an image of the Di- vine sovereignty." For this oiessed Gospel alone can relieve human consciences, illume human intellects, quicken human spirits, transform human lives, and elevate and make prosperous human government. Truly has Goldwin Smith declared, " Not democracy in America, but free Christian- ity in America, is the real key of American glory." FUSION. Secondly, as our American Baptist Home Mission Society realizes, Christianity alone 20 can prevail in uniting and solidifying the numerous classes of our foreign popula- tion. There is no need to argue that a na- tion, in order to be prosperous, must be united. Forcefully has Richard Mayo Smith, in his recent work on "Emigration and Im- migration," after quoting Edmund Burke's memorable saying that to make us love our country our country ought to be lovely, em- phasized the thought that "in order that we may take a pride in our nationality and be willing to make sacrifices for our country, it is necessary that it should satisfy, in some measure, our ideal of what a nation should be" ; and then our author intelligently adds, "A nation is great, not on account of the individuals contained within its boundaries, but through the strength begotten of com- mon national ideals and aspirations. No nation can exist and be powerful that is not homogeneous in this sense. And the great ethnic problem we have before us is to fuse these diverse elements into one common nationality, having one language, one politi- cal practice, one patriotism and one ideal of social development." And this the Gospel can do as can no other force. It knows no such distinction as Jew and Gentile, German and Italian, Slavonian and Scandinavian, African and American. Paul on Mars' Hill pricked the bubble of the autochthonic theory of the Greeks with a single sentence in his matchless address, " God hath made of one blood all nations"— the scholarly, re- 2 I fined, philosophical Greek, the brave, heroic, ambitious Roman, the rude, savage, un- cultured Cythian. Along with the doctrine of Jehovah's exalted Fatherhood, Christ in- culcated the correlative doctrine of human- ity's sympathetic brotherhood, the mighty, divinely-given law of human interdepend- ence, the heaven-born teaching that the whole social fabric, from base to apex, is a compact and finely-knit organism. Or, as Arnold has beautifully put it in his "Light of the World," our Lord taught that — " He who loves his brother, seen and known, Loves God, unseen, unknown ; and who, by faith, Finds the far Father in the close, sweet Son, Is one with both." THE COMING UNITY. In his attractive work on "The Divine Ori- gin of Christianity," Dr. Richard S. Storrs, dealing with this subject, predicts that the coming ages will present, through the influ- ence of our divine religion, a unity such as was never dreamed of by the Roman Em- pire when it strove to bring all nations under its sway, nor by Charlemagne when he sought to unite disorganized Europe, nor by Napoleon I. when he fought to bring a continent in submission to his sovereignty ; and he confidently looks forward to the consummation, as he eloquently says, of a plan " when the different nations, each with its idioms of custom and language, shall be 22 united in a bond of peace which knows no suspicion and admits no suspension, be- cause resulting from the voluntary subjec- tion of each and all to the rule of a common King, the Lord of Hosts." Naturalism may- attribute the present increasing fraternization of the races to the rough collision of arms, to skilful invention, to wide-spread com- merce, or to other great industrial move- ments of modern civilization ; but the intel- ligent Christian knows that it is the result rather of the Divine teaching in Christianity that " the fellowship of humanity is deeper and mightier than the alienations of race ; that the characteristics of humanity are es- sential and permanent, the differences of race accidental and evanescent ; that the mighty race prejudice must give way as men, alien by birth, find themselves breth- ren in Jesus Christ." Yes, it is a Christ- wrought picture portrayed by a Christian poet when he sings — " For I dipt into the future far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and the wonders that should be, Till the war-drums throbbed no longer and the battle- flags were furled In the parliament of the man, the federation of the world." God speed the day when every kindred and tongue, and tribe and people — all Europe and Asia, Africa and America — 23 shall gather in sympathetic, soul-moving union around the throne of Him who hath made them of one blood, and there offer the prayer and sing the song of a divinely formed and an eternally cemented brotherhood : "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen." Published by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Temple Court, N. Y. City. 24