Courtesy of The Survey
Some of Syracuse's Newer Citizens—a Greek and Two Turks
That these immigrants lack physical and moral courage is conceded even by their friends. They do not settle their quarrels on the spot face to face but revenge themselves treacherously from behind when they get a safe chance. Their feeling that truth is a luxury not to be brought out on common occasions gives them an advantage in a commercial system which takes for granted a good deal of Anglo-Saxon straightforwardness. It needs but half an eye to see that the "business ability" attributed to the prospering dealer is often nothing but the practice of Oriental craft among the unsuspicious. As the Romans found these people at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, so we find them to-day, good looking, pliant, clever, sometimes brilliant, but shifty and wanting in character.
When two peoples find that their standards repel like oil and water, they do not care to associate. Naturally, then, the Oriental immigrants tend to huddle in colonies in which they may live in the old way, keep their pride and spare themselves the pains of adjustment to American ideals. Not only do such colonies check the assimilation of those who most need it, but they are apt to be nests of congestion, disease and depravity, as well as hot-beds for the propagation of false and impractical ideas of political and social freedom.
CHAPTER IX
ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF IMMIGRATION
More and more immigration is an economic matter, a flow of men rather than of families, seeking gain rather than religious and political liberty. Those who bring anything but their hands are a very small and diminishing contingent. Most of the money the immigrant shows on landing has been supplied him for that purpose. In 1882, when the old immigration reached its height, the public domain was being carved up at a tremendous rate, and the home-seeker predominated. When the crest of the new immigration arrived, in 1907, a quarter of a century later, free land was gone forever, and the job-seeker predominated. Formerly the idea of wandering oversea sprang up naturally among the intelligent and restless; now the idea is sown broadcast by thousands of steamship agents and their runners. In the tavern, knee to knee with the yokels, sits the runner, and paints an El Dorado. The poor fellows will believe him if he tells them the trees of America bear golden leaves. When the "American fever" seizes upon the peasant, it is the obliging runner who suggests mortgaging his home for the passage-money or who finds a buyer for his cows.