Granting that each one of these races will bequeath us something evil, let us take the standpoint of the secretary of the Immigration Restriction League and see to what we shall fall heir. We shall get from the Slav his crudity, from the Jew his sharpness, from the Italian his mobility, from the Armenian his Oriental shrewdness, which is akin to lying, from the Magyar a fiery temper; from each of them something which we call ill. When these disagreeable qualities are properly proportioned and balanced, they may so counteract one another, that in the sum total we may after all be the gainers. It seems absurd to go about this matter mathematically, whether one traces the possible gain or loss.
The truth is, that up to this date, in spite of the fact that already Slav, Jewish and Italian blood flows in the veins of some of us: in spite of the fact that these people fill the cities almost to overflowing, there is no perceptible physical or moral degeneration visible which can be traced to the foreigner.
The quarters of American cities where the foreigners live are not the worst quarters; and I would rather trust myself in the dark, to the mysteries of Hester Street than to certain portions of the West side exclusively populated by a certain type of degenerate Americans. Recently a professor of economics in one of our universities asked me to show him those terrible parts of New York where the foreigners live; where the children are said to be so unhappy, the men so oppressed by poverty; and where the women have not enough to wear. I took him across the Bowery, which has lost its terrors since it became foreign territory, across the streets of the Ghetto and along its avenues. We found the supposed unhappy children, well dressed and well fed, dancing to the notes of the hurdy-gurdy grinder, as happy as children naturally are, who do not have many “manners to mind,” whose playground is the street, and who have music from morning till nightfall. We walked through endless rows of tenements and saw men engaged in lawful pursuits; from the garret to the cellars the Ghetto was a beehive of industry. We saw no street loafers, drunkards or idlers. In “Little Hungary,” where we ate and enjoyed a daintily served dinner, we loitered until evening, when we met a vast army of men and women who came pouring in from Broadway’s stores and shops, walking with that pride and happiness which comes from the consciousness of having done a day’s work, and done it well. My friend was very much disappointed because he saw no horrors, no unhappy children or unhappy men.
Again we passed the Bowery, going on to the American section of New York, the Rialto. Here were horrors enough; whole blocks where there were no children; for both the very wicked and the very rich are not blessed by them. Young and old men, fashionably dressed and properly tipsy, went in to cheap shows, saloons and brothels, to have a “good time.” These young men, rich sons of rich fathers, and these old men, are idlers and perverters of their own passions. They and they alone are the great problem which we have need to fear; for it is a problem which cannot be solved. In the fashionable restaurants of Fifth Avenue and Upper Broadway, we saw the women “who toil not neither do they spin,” and who, with all the Heavenly Father’s care, were not properly clothed. They too, more than the women of the Ghetto, are the problem we need to study; for among them and by them are lost our democracy, our purity and our virtue.
I fear more from a certain type of Jew on Upper Broadway, than I do from the Jew of the Ghetto; even as I fear more from a certain type of over-ripe Americans than I do from this undeveloped peasantry. The question which the American faces is not whether the foreigner can be assimilated, but who will do the assimilating. Not even the question whether the foreigner is the inferior need concern us; for in the race which is now on and at its height, the American just described is left behind; and those of us who are watching the race are not at all amazed.
In nearly all the manufacturing towns of New England, the Swede and the German are forging to the front, while the Pole and the Italian are following closely; but the sons of the shrewd and inventive Yankees are keeping fast company, riding in fast automobiles, and drinking strong cocktails. They will soon be in the rear because of physical, mental and spiritual bankruptcy.
It does not follow that these New Americans do not present a racial problem; but the problem is largely one of assimilating power on our part. The real problem is: Whether the American is virile enough and not so much whether the foreign material is of the proper quality. I have no doubt as to either proposition; I believe that there is still remarkable assimilating power left which increases rather than decreases with the mixture of blood. I also believe that the average New American is like wax, hard wax sometimes,—perhaps more like lead or steel; but he will be moulded into our image and bear the marks of our characteristics whatever they may be.
As I write this I realize that I am saying “us” and “our” as if I were not a New American myself and one of those who make up the racial problem. Yet when I recall to myself the fact that I too belong to an alien race, it comes to me like a shock; when I realize that I was born beneath another flag and that this is but my adopted country, it gives me almost a sense of shame that I have in a great degree, if not altogether, forgotten these facts, and I am so completely and absorbingly an American, that I can write “us” and “our,” speak of my own people as foreigners, and of my own native country as a strange land. Something has so wrought upon me that in spite of the fact that I came to this country in my young manhood, I look upon America as my Fatherland. That same power is still active; still strong enough to repeat the miracle of the yesterday; for I am no better than these millions who are regarded as a menace. I came here with the same blood as theirs and the same heritage of good or ill, bequeathed by my race; yet I feel myself completely one with all which this country possesses, that is worth living for and dying for. With millions of these New Americans I say to-day that which we shall continue to say, whether it fares well or ill with our adopted country: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
XXI
THE NEW AMERICAN AND OLD PROBLEMS
“COMPETITION is the life of prejudice” is an old truth, in a somewhat new setting. Back of the prejudice against Jew, Italian and Slav, is this fact: they are monopolizing certain departments of labour and trades, and in nearly every activity they are beginning to be felt in competition. The Swede is regarded as treacherous by the man whose place he has taken in the machine shops East and West; the Slovak and Pole are called dirty and unreliable by the miners whom they have supplanted in Pennsylvania, and the Jew is accused of trickery by the American who has a clothing store on the next corner. Under whatever name the feeling against the foreigner hides itself, it usually is in substance the fear of competition; and every law restricting immigration has been with the idea of protecting American labour.