Judged by the superficial tests upon which reliance is generally placed, the native-born children of foreign parents seem to be very well assimilated. They wear American hats, clothes, and shoes, they speak English, they are as literate as the offspring of native parents of the same social class, they play American games when they are young, and engage in American business when they grow up. In the words of Professors Jenks and Lauck, speaking of the foreign races in the larger cities, “Their children differ little from those of the American-born, unless they are brought up throughout their childhood in the race colonies,”—a weighty exception.[[360]] But are they really assimilated? Are the tests which have been enumerated above fulfilled? This is a matter worthy of the most serious consideration, and very difficult of determination, withal.
It is a very hopeless task to attempt to decide upon the degree of assimilation of any group on a statistical basis. Statistics which might give light are meager and unreliable, and it is not a matter which lends itself well to such treatment at best. In many of the statistics which might be appealed to, the second generation of immigrant is included under the general head of the native-born, and sometimes gives that class a more unfavorable appearance than it would otherwise present. As far as the statistics of criminality and tendency to pauperism are concerned, the native-born of foreign parents appear to be the most troublesome class in the population. They seem to have earned an unfortunate reputation for lawlessness, although their crimes, as the Immigration Commission has pointed out, tend to resemble those of the native element in character. But these things alone are not sufficient tests of assimilation. We need to know whether in their mental processes, in their attitude toward life, and in their position in regard to political or moral questions, there linger peculiarities traceable to their foreign origin. We need to know whether their neighbors, of the old American stock, think of them as different from themselves, because of race. We need to know whether, in respect to international questions, their views are colored by inherited affiliations or prejudices. In regard to such considerations as these it is impossible to make any positive and sweeping statements. It seems wholly probable that there are large numbers of the descendants of immigrants, particularly of the earlier races, who would measure up to the full standard of assimilation even by these tests. But it seems also beyond question that there are great bodies of immigrants of the second generation who are prevented from complete absorption into the body politic, if not by their own lack of adaptation, at least by the attitude of the representatives of the old American stock.
It would be foolhardy to deny that, at the present time, there are immense unassimilated elements in our population,—immigrants of the first or second generation, possibly even of the third. Every foreign-American society, be it Irish, German, Italian, Slovak, or any other, whatever its aims and purposes, is a standing evidence of a group of people who recognize certain affiliations or loyalties which are foreign to the out-and-out American. The number of such organizations is legion, and the membership, if it could be reckoned, would reach an imposing total. The recent protests by Irish-American societies against the production of certain plays by the Irish Players, the German-American demonstration which broke up the peace meeting in Carnegie Hall on December 12, 1911, as well as the German-American meetings held four years previously to protest against the enforcement in New York of what was styled a Puritan Sunday, the discrimination of the Russian government against certain of our citizens—these and a host of similar events occurring from time to time emphasize the existence within this country of racial contingents which have not become indistinguishably blended into the American people. If, for any conceivable reason, the United States should be drawn into any European international complication, she would find that hosts of her citizens, as well as mere residents, displayed a divided allegiance, of which the preponderance might easily be on the side of some foreign nation. As long as such conditions as these prevail, it is idle to claim that assimilation is complete.
Assimilation is a matter of the force of environment pitted against that of heredity. The protracted discussion as to the relative influence of these two factors continues unsettled. But the claim that the second generation of immigrants are thoroughly assimilated seems to deny the importance of either. To assert that the children of foreign parents, brought up in a home made by foreigners though located in the United States, are in the end equally American with children born of native parents, and reared in a home upon which the American type is indelibly stamped, is to claim that heredity is of no account whatever, and that the only environment which has weight is that rather vague environment of “country.” It is to say that a man’s character is solely the result of the region in which he lives, without reference to either birth or breeding. It seems hardly credible that such an assertion should be seriously made. It is more likely that those who say that the children of the foreign-born are assimilated really mean that they are nearly enough assimilated for all practical purposes.
Professor Franz Boas, in his study of “Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,” which forms a part of the report of the Immigration Commission, and has attracted wide attention, lays much stress on the change in environment which follows immigration. He reaches the conclusion that there is a tendency manifest in the American-born children of immigrants to approach a common physical type in this country, and that this tendency becomes more marked as the mother’s length of residence in the United States, previous to the birth of the child, increases. His main investigations are concerned with the head form, and have to do particularly with Sicilians and east European Hebrews. The cephalic index has always been considered one of the most permanent of race characters, but Professor Boas’s figures seem to show that the naturally long-headed Sicilians tend to become less so in this country, while the relative length of head of the naturally brachycephalic Hebrews increases. The results reached by Professor Boas are somewhat startling, and challenge attention. It is to be hoped that they will be subjected to the most careful scrutiny by anthropologists qualified either to verify or to correct them. Until they have been thus tested they can be accepted only tentatively. On the face of them they suggest certain weaknesses or limitations. In the first place, they are concerned with too few races, and too few individuals in each race, to justify general conclusions. Again, they are concerned almost wholly with persons under twenty years of age, who are naturally still in a plastic state. It would be much more significant if it could be shown that this tendency still persisted after the individuals were fully matured. Furthermore, the curves show a decided tendency to lose their regularity, and go to pieces, in the upper ages tabulated, either because there were too few individuals in those age groups to afford regularity, or because the tendencies actually diminish as age advances. Finally, it must be said that if the mere change of residence from eastern Europe or southern Italy to America is sufficient to produce a complete change of head form in the offspring, it can only mean that after all the head form is not such a permanent race character as has been supposed, and really has little significance. Certainly we should avoid such sweeping deductions from this study as Professors Jenks and Lauck make in the statement, “If these physical changes are so great, we may well conclude that the whole mental and even the moral constitution of the people may also rapidly change under the new conditions.”[[361]]
It will not do to assume, as is sometimes done apparently, that mere residence in the United States is enough to make Americans of foreign immigrants or their children. America is something more than merely a section of the earth’s surface. It is a set of standards, customs, ideals, institutions, mores, embodied and personified in a group of people. Like many other of the deepest things in life they would be very hard to enumerate or describe, yet their existence is none the less sure. They are exemplified more completely in some persons than in others, and he who most thoroughly personifies them is the truest American. Historically, they have been associated with a certain physical strain, with which many of them appear to be inherently connected. Real assimilation means adoption into this spiritual inheritance. The only way it can be brought about is through close, intimate, constant association with those in whom it is embodied.
The agencies of assimilation then, in addition to the physical one of race blending, are those things which further contact and association between the newcomer and those who are truly Americans. Professors Jenks and Lauck give a list of such causes or influences.[[362]] The list might perhaps be amplified, but as it stands it is an enumeration of forces which contribute to interrace association. It is not essential that the influence of the American upon the immigrant be an intentional, or even a conscious, one. Many of the most powerful forces are unobserved. The foreigner is very much aware of the differences between himself and his American neighbors, and the laws of imitation work strongly. But to have these forces work, there must be contact.
Under the modern conditions which surround the immigrant this contact or association is all too often wholly lacking, or very meager. The entire life of many of our foreign-born and the youth of their children is spent in compact colonies, where, except for a few externals, the atmosphere is much more suggestive of the old world than of the new. The conditions of the old home are reproduced with the utmost possible fidelity, though often with a loss of much of the charm. So far as there is any social life, it is almost wholly confined within the boundaries of race. Even in the industrial life of to-day, as has been pointed out, there is practically no contact with Americanizing influences. It is really a wonder that the aliens are Americanized at all. When we stop to consider that in Massachusetts and New Jersey there are only two natives for every foreigner, and that many of these natives are of foreign parentage, we realize how slight are the chances for assimilation. It would be almost the task of a lifetime for two Americans to thoroughly Americanize a native peasant from a backward district of southeastern Europe, if they gave their whole time to it.
The one great assimilative agency, which is continually cited as the hope of the coming generation of the foreign-born, is the American public school. It certainly is a tremendous force in the right direction, and its possibilities are immeasurable. Yet even the public school is not a panacea for all ills. It cannot take the place of both birth and home training. During the hours that the pupils are in school, a wise and tactful teacher can instill many of the principles of Americanism into their minds. But the means, good as it is, is not adequate to the end. And it is to be feared that under recent conditions even the public schools are losing some of the power in this direction that they once had. With the growth of localized colonies of a single race, or of several foreign races, the schools in many of our large cities are losing their American character, as far as the pupils are concerned, so that the immigrant child finds himself associating with others equally foreign with himself, instead of with children from American families. There is a story that in a certain New England city, of high scholastic traditions, an American lady determined to place her son in the public school, and on taking him down found that he was the only American child in that school. A Russian Jewess edged up to her and remarked confidentially, “Ain’t it a shame, the way the Dagoes are crowding in everywhere these days?” Furthermore, a very large proportion of the children of the foreign-born do not receive even such Americanizing influence as the public school exerts, because of the religious prejudices which compel them to attend parochial schools.
Aside from the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, the positive forces which prevent or retard assimilation may be considered under three heads, viz. the indifference, love of wealth, and race prejudice of the older residents of the United States. As to the first of these, no elaboration is required. The attitude of those who are perfectly content to let things drift along as they will, without any care on their part, is too familiar and too well understood to need comment. The love of wealth manifests itself as a barrier to assimilation, in two principal ways. First, the greed for economic gain results in bringing in continually cheaper supplies of labor, represented by ever lower and more backward races, and paying them such wages as of necessity keep them on the lowest scale of living. Secondly, the well-developed distinctions between the rich and the poor prevent Americans from associating on friendly terms with these same foreigners for whose presence and condition they are at least indirectly responsible. The growing tendency for certain occupations of the lower type to become the especial province of certain foreign races, as has been observed above, is continually accentuating these distinctions.