One result which has certainly followed the immigration of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth is a vast increase in the number of denominations and sects organized in this country. The position of the Roman Catholic Church as a product of immigration is too obvious to be dwelt upon. The predominance of this form of belief among the Irish of the first half of the nineteenth century, which more than anything else motived the Native American and Know Nothing movements, has been maintained to a certain extent among the Germans, and in later days among the Italians and Slavs.[[262]]
The census reports on religious bodies unfortunately give no information as to the nationality of members and communicants, so that it is impossible to distribute the adherents of the various sects among the constituent races. However, out of the list of denominations given we can pick a number of manifestly foreign origin which indicate the tremendous diversity of religious forms which are represented in this country. Among them are the following: Armenian Church; Buddhists, Chinese and Japanese; Dunkers; Eastern Orthodox churches, Russian, Servian, Syrian, and Greek; various German Evangelical bodies; various Scandinavian Lutheran bodies; Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Synod; Moravian bodies; Jewish congregations; Polish national church; Swedish Evangelical bodies; Hungarian Reformed Church; Bahais, etc.
The total number of organizations covered by the report of the census for 1906 is 212,230 as reported by 186 denominations. One hundred and fourteen of these denominations reported the use of some foreign language in some of their organizations. Of the denominations so reporting 12.5 per cent of their organizations, with 26.3 per cent of their membership, report the use of foreign languages, either alone or with English. There are forty-one individual languages included in the report.
These facts indicate that, whatever changes the removal to a new environment involves, and however much of American life the immigrants adopt, a large percentage of our foreign population brings its religion with it, and keeps it. This is not to be wondered at, as we know that men hold on to their traditional religion more tenaciously than to almost any other of their mores and resent interference here most of all. More than this, it is probably well that it is so. For religion is the great conserving force of morality, the principal bulwark of traditional conduct. The perils of the moral nature of the immigrant in his new home are many. Trained to repression, restriction, and control, he finds himself suddenly endowed with liberty and opportunity. This liberty he is all too likely to interpret as license. Finding people all around him doing things which have hitherto seemed to him sinful or immoral, he adopts the practices, without having acquired the principles and restraints which safeguard them, and make them innocuous for Americans. If, along with this shifting of ethical standards, he loses also his religious sanctions, his moral danger is great indeed.[[263]] This process has been particularly observed among the second generation of Hebrews. In the light of American civilization and public thought, they find the religion of their fathers discredited. It appears to them antiquated and unworthy. They throw it over unreservedly, and with it goes the whole body of admirable moral precepts and guides, and the remarkable ethical standards, which have been indissolubly associated with religious belief in their minds. The unfortunate part of the process is that nothing takes the place, either of the religious faith, or of the moral code. The old, which was good, is forsaken without adopting the new, which is perhaps better. As a result, juvenile crime is very prevalent among the Jews, and a large proportion of those concerned in the white slave traffic, both men and women, are Hebrews.[[264]] It would be difficult to say to what extent the bad record of the second generation of immigrants in regard to criminality and general lawlessness may be due to similar causes.
While the majority of our immigrants are nominally Christians, there is nevertheless a sufficient demand for religious guidance to constitute a tremendous foreign missionary problem within the borders of our own land—the more so when it is remembered that a large part of the efforts of some of our foreign missionary boards is directed toward people who are already nominally Christians, in their home lands. Many of the religious denominations are beginning to feel this call, and are responding to it by special services or organizations, planned to meet the needs of foreign residents. As stated above, many religious bodies support missionaries on Ellis Island. The Young Men’s Christian Association devotes especial attention to the foreign-born. Many foreign groups have societies of a religious character, aside from their regular church organizations.
Yet in spite of all that can be said on this side of the question, there remains an astonishing apathy on the part of the body of American Protestant churches toward the religious and moral needs and dangers of the foreign population, and of the opportunities for service which it offers. This service might be made of incalculable benefit not only to the immigrants themselves, but to their adopted country, whose destiny hangs in the same balance as theirs. It is true that a group of ignorant, stolid, perhaps dirty, European peasants on the streets of one’s own city does not make the same appeal to his emotions and sympathies as the half-clad savages which he reads of in the missionary journals. Yet the spiritual needs of the immigrant group are probably the greater of the two—at least they are more immediate—and the receptive attitude of the newly arrived immigrant toward all elevating influences makes him a uniquely promising subject for missionary work.
The unwillingness on the part of many wealthy and fashionable churches to accept this responsibility in the spirit of the founder of the Christian religion may be attributed to ignorance of actual conditions, to fastidiousness, or to race prejudice, if not to actual indifference. But if the church is to fulfill its mission in twentieth century America, the efforts toward serving the spiritual needs of the alien must be immensely widened and strengthened. Reverend Charles Stelzle gives an ironical epitome of the situation in the story of the church in New York City which sold its fine building because there were too many foreigners in the neighborhood, and sent the proceeds to the Board of Foreign Missions.[[265]]
In regard to that set of social conditions which are represented by statistics of births, marriages, and deaths, no definite statistical data for the country at large are available. The census reports do not make the necessary distinctions between native and foreign-born to serve as a basis of comparison. Such a comparison is, in fact, practically impossible, for the composition of the foreign-born element of the population in respect to sex, age, and conjugal condition differs so widely from that of a normal population that any comparative rates, based on general statistics, would be meaningless. Thus a foreign-born death rate, based simply on total deaths and total population, would probably be remarkably low. For, as has been shown, the foreign-born population is largely in the middle age groups. They have passed the dangerous period of childhood, and many of them, with advancing age, go home to die. But if compared with a selected group of native-born, of the same sex and age, the foreign-born would probably show a high death rate, on account of the prevalence of industrial accidents and diseases, and unhygienic living conditions.
Similar considerations hold true as regards the birth rate and marriage rate. In respect to the former, it has been observed in another connection that the birth rate of the foreign-born is extraordinarily high for the first generation. As the length of residence of any foreign group in this country increases, its birth rate tends to approach that of the native-born until, as has been said, “the probability is that when immigrants have lived with us so long that their grandparents were born in the land, there is little more difference between the two stocks in reproductivity than between any other equally extensive groups taken at random.”[[266]] The study made by the Immigration Commission of the fecundity of immigrant women shows that women born of foreign parents have a much greater fecundity than those born of native parents.
In respect to marriages, comparative rates would have little meaning unless they could be very carefully refined. The relative number of foreign-born women is so small, and the number of men who have left wives on the other side so large, and the temporary character of the residence of many aliens so marked, as to put the entire question of marriage among the foreign-born into an abnormal status. Many obstacles prevent the free intermarriage of foreigners with natives. Marriages between the foreign-born in this country are probably much more infrequent than would be the case in a normal population of the same size. Even in the case of the second generation of immigrants Professor Commons finds that the proportion of marriages is smaller than among the native-born.[[267]] The effect of this is to increase the tendency, already noticed, to augment the population of this country by new immigration, rather than by the reproduction of elements already here.