Nor is it simply the East Side in lower New York that is so manifestly foreign. Go where you will on Manhattan Island and you will see few names on business signs that do not betray their foreign derivation. Two out of every three persons you meet will be foreign. You will see the Italian gangs cleaning the streets, the Irish will control the motor of your trolley-car and collect your fares, the policeman will be Irish or German, the waiters where you dine will be French or German, Italian or English, the clerks in the vast majority of the shopping places will be foreign, the people you meet will constantly remind you of the rarity of the native American stock. You are ready to believe the statement that there are in New York more persons of German descent than of native descent, and more Germans than in any city of Germany except Berlin. Here are nearly twice as many Irish as in Dublin, about as many Jews as in Warsaw, and more Italians than in Naples or Venice. In government, in sentiment, in practice, as in population (thirty-seven per cent. foreign-born and eighty per cent. of foreign birth or parentage), the metropolis is predominantly foreign, and in elections the foreign vote, shrewdly manipulated for the most part, controls.Other Foreign Cities Nor is this true of New York alone. In thirty-three of our largest cities the foreign population is larger than the native; in Milwaukee and Fall River the foreign percentage rises as high as eighty-five per cent. In all these cities the foreign colonies are as distinct and practically as isolated socially as though they were in Russia or Poland, Italy or Hungary. Foreign in language, customs, habits, and institutions, these colonies are separated from each other, as well as from the American population, by race, customs, and religion.
Failure in City Government
To believe that this makes no particular difference so far as the development of our national life is concerned is to shut one's eyes to obvious facts. As such an impartial and intelligent student of our institutions as Mr. James Bryce has pointed out, the conspicuous failure of democracy in America thus far is seen in the bad government of our great cities. And it is in these centers that the mass of the immigrants learn their first and often last lessons of American life.
Where the Newcomers First Go
The strong tendency of immigrants is to settle in or near the ports of entry. Where in the great cities do these newcomers find a dwelling place? What will their first lessons in American life be? If we deal largely with New York, it is simply because here are the typical conditions and here the larger proportion of arrivals. Once admitted at Ellis Island, the alien is free to go where he will; or rather, where he can, for his place of residence is restricted, after all. If he is an Italian, he will naturally and almost of necessity go to one of the Little Italies; if a Jew, to the ghetto of the East Side; if a Bohemian, to Little Bohemia; and so on. In other words, he will go, naturally and almost inevitably, to the colonies which tend to perpetuate race customs and prejudices, and to prevent assimilation. Worse yet, these colonies are in the tenement and slum districts, the last environment of all conceivable in which this raw material of American citizenship should be placed.
II. Tenement-House Life
Vice-Breeding Conditions
To those who have not made personal investigation, the present conditions, in spite of laws and efforts to ameliorate the worst evils, are well nigh unbelievable. The cellar population, the blind alley population, the swarming masses in buildings that are little better than rat-traps, the herding of whole families in single rooms, in which the miserable beings sleep, eat, cook, and make clothing for contractors, or cigars that would never go into men's mouths if the men saw where they were made—these things seem almost impossible in a civilized and Christian land. It is horrible to be obliged to think of the human misery and hopelessness and grind to which hundreds of thousands are subjected in the city of New York day in and out, without rest or change. It is no wonder that criminals and degenerates come from these districts; it is a marvel, rather, that so few result, and that so much of human kindness and goodness exists in spite of crushing conditions. There is a bright as well as dark side even to the most disgraceful districts; but there is no denying that the dark vastly predominates, and that the struggle for righteousness is too hard for the average human being. Nearly everything is against the peasant immigrant thrust into the throng which has no welcome for him, no decent room, and yet from which he has little chance to get away. He is commonly cleaner morally when he lands than after six months of the life here. Why should he not be? What has American Christianity done to safeguard or help him?
Immigrants Not Responsible
The existence of the tenement-house evils, it must be borne in mind, is chargeable primarily to the owner and landlord, not to the foreign occupant. The landlords are especially to blame for the ill consequences. The immigrant cannot dictate terms or conditions. He has to go where he can. The prices charged for rent are exorbitant, and should secure decency and healthful quarters. No property is so remunerative. This rent money is literally blood money in thousands of instances, and yet every effort to improve things is bitterly fought. Why should not socialism and anarchism grow in such environment? Of course many of the immigrants are familiar with poor surroundings and do not apparently object to dirt and crowding. But that does not make these conditions less perilous to American life. Self-respect has a hard struggle for survival in these sections, and if the immigrant does not possess or loses that, he is of the undesirable class. Mr. Robert Hunter makes the statement that no other city in the world has so many dark and windowless rooms, or so many persons crowded on the acre, or so many families deprived of light and air as New York. He says there are 360,000 dark rooms in Greater New York. And these are almost entirely occupied by the foreigners. But unsanitary conditions prevail also in all the cities, large and small, and especially in the mine and mill and factory towns, wherever large masses of the poorest workers live.