The general conclusion in regard to the effects of emigration upon European countries, which the facts appear to justify, is that the movement is at least of doubtful benefit to the countries of source.[[385]] The obvious beneficial results are partially if not wholly offset by certain undesirable consequences, insidious and persistent in their nature, and likely to make themselves more manifest with the passage of years. The attitude of European governments serves as a verification of this conclusion. It is certain that the advantages of emigration do not sufficiently outweigh its drawbacks in the eyes of most of these governments to lead them to regard it otherwise than with disfavor, although none of them now practically forbid it.[[386]] Nor is that attitude due to the military interest alone.
The question of the effects of immigration upon the immigrants is perhaps the most difficult of all to determine. It is manifest that it must affect all of their life interests, in their own generation and for many generations to come. And particularly, if it is desired to ascertain whether the immigrant gains or loses in the long run by his undertaking, the effort involves the attempt at evaluation of almost every human activity, in order that a balance may be struck between the good and the bad.
On the face of it, it seems that there must be some gain to the immigrants from immigration. It is inconceivable that such a movement should continue year after year unless those directly concerned in it were profiting thereby. It is true, to be sure, that there is a vast deal of misinformation, and false hope, on the part of the immigrants. Those who are interested in their coming strive to paint the future in the brightest possible colors, and to minimize the drawbacks. The example of one or two eminently successful acquaintances is likely to wholly outweigh that of many who only scrape along or fail altogether. Nevertheless, making all allowances, it seems necessary to believe that there is a net margin of advantage in the long run. It is perhaps possible that this advantage may often be more specious than real, and that the immigrant may believe himself the gainer when, if he could balance true values, he would find himself in a more pitiable case than before.
The great gain of the immigrant is to be looked for in the field of wealth, or material prosperity. There can be little doubt that on the average the immigrant is able to earn and save more, not only of money, but of wealth in the broader sense, than he could at home. This is the great underlying motive of modern immigration, and if it were illusory, the movement must soon fail. A comparison of economic conditions in Europe and America, as far as this can be made, seems to bear this out. Both wages and prices are lower, on the whole, in the countries which send us most of our immigrants than they are in the United States. But wages appear to be proportionally lower than prices. The money sent from America is a very real and tangible thing, and represents a great economic advance on the part of a large proportion of the immigrants.
Doubtless, there is also somewhat of gain in independence and freedom for many of the immigrants. The growth of class distinctions in the United States has not yet proceeded so far that the immigrant from Austria-Hungary or Italy does not feel an improvement in his social status. To be sure, the classes of population with which the immigrant establishes this social equality in the United States are not such as to do him the greatest conceivable good, but a sense of heightened self-respect and self-reliance does undoubtedly develop, nevertheless.[[387]]
Many of the immigrants, of course, forge ahead, either because of unusual ability or exceptional good fortune, and attain a position of advancement in every way which would have been utterly inconceivable in their old home. There are countless instances of prosperous business men, eminent and respected citizens, invaluable servants of society in this country, who could never have been anything but humble peasants in their home land. These shining examples attract much attention here and abroad, and serve as valuable illustrations of what may be accomplished under favorable circumstances.[[388]]
But for the bulk of the ordinary immigrants the economic and other advantages are offset by terrible hardships and losses. As one thinks of the broken and separated families, often never reunited; of the depressing, and degrading group life of men in this country; of religious ideals shattered and new vices acquired in the unwonted and untempered atmosphere of American liberty; of the frequent industrial accidents and unceasing overstrain of the Slavs in mine and factory, upon which they reckon as one of the concomitants of life in America, and which sends them back to Europe in a few years, broken and prematurely aged, but with an accumulation of dollars;[[389]] of the tuberculosis contracted by Italians in the confined life to which they are unaccustomed, and by Greek boot-blacks in their squalid quarters and their long day’s labors;[[390]] of the sad conditions of labor in the sweatshops and tenement workrooms;[[391]] of the child labor in the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts and New Jersey;[[392]] of the destruction of family life by the taking of boarders, and the heart-breaking toil of the boarding-boss’s wife;[[393]] of the unremitting toil and scant recreation, of the low wages and insufficient standard of living, of the unsparing and niggardly thrift by which the savings are made possible—as one thinks of these things, which are all too common to be considered exceptional, and compares them with the conditions which characterize peasant life in Europe, where many æsthetic and neighborly circumstances tend to offset the poverty, one cannot help wondering how large a proportion of our immigrants finally reap a net gain in the things that are really worth while.
It is useless for any individual to undertake to answer this question categorically for immigrants in general. The answer rests too much upon personal opinion and estimation of relative values. The point that needs to be emphasized in this connection is that against the evident and unquestioned economic gain of most, and the general social and intellectual gain of many, there must be set off a long list of serious, though not always obvious, evils which result for a large proportion of the immigrants under present conditions.
The question of the desirability of immigration from the point of view of humanity as a whole, as previously stated, is a summation of the aspects of the problem from the point of view of the United States, the countries of source, and the immigrants. This balance must be struck by every student for himself. The effort has been made in the foregoing pages to set forth the facts which condition this great movement at the present time, as a groundwork upon which reasonable conclusions may be based. It has appeared that for the United States there is at present no real need of further immigrants, and that the most that can be said is that they do no harm. On the other hand, it seems likely that the evil effects from the movement as at present conducted—effects to be developed mainly in the future rather than existent at the present time—will overbalance any good that may result. From the point of view of European countries, while the advantages are obvious, it appears that there are also fundamental drawbacks which may in the end more than offset the gain. For the immigrant there is an undoubted net margin of advantage on the average; but this advantage is less general and real than is often supposed, and is qualified by many weighty considerations. In striking this balance it is important to bear in mind the influence of emigration and immigration upon total population. If it is true that immigrants in a large measure are supplanters of native population, rather than additions to population, it then becomes a question whether the immigrants as a body are happier than the native population would have been, which would otherwise have filled their places.
In regard to national prosperity and welfare, moreover, it must ever be remembered that the effects of immigration upon all countries concerned, particularly upon the receiving country, are scarcely more than in the embryo. Such a tremendous movement as this must inevitably have significant and far-reaching results. But only a prophetic vision could state with assurance what those results will be.