Influence of Immigration
Just what part immigration has played in producing these changes it is of course difficult to say with exactness, but unquestionably the part has been very great. The twenty-three millions of aliens admitted into the United States since 1820 brought their habits and customs and standards of living with them; brought also their religion or want of it; and it would be absurd to imagine that all of these millions had been Americanized, or, in other words, had given up their old ways for our ways of thinking and living. On the contrary, they have transported all sorts of political notions from monarchial countries to our soil. "The continental ideas of the Sabbath, the nihilist's ideas of government, the communist's ideas of property, the pagan's ideas of religion—all these mingle in our air with the ideas that shaped the men at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge," that adorned hill, dale and prairie with Christian church and Christian school, and made possible the building of free America.
The Grade of the Aliens
As we have seen, the immigrants have mostly represented the peasant or lower classes of the countries whence they came. This is noted, not in the way of prejudice, but because it is always true that mortality is greater, and crime, illiteracy, and pauperism are more prevalent among the lower classes. Of course it is also true that if the higher classes had come from foreign lands they would have made an addition to the social life quite different from that which did come. The average character of the immigration, however favorable, required raising in order to meet the American level. In the new environment it was to be expected that large numbers of individuals among the immigrants would rise to prominence and influence, and this has been the case. The country owes large debt to the immigrants of earlier days. Their children and descendants are loyal Americans. It is true, on the other hand, that many have come from unfortunate conditions in the Old World only to fall into quite as unfortunate ones in the New; and they and their descendants have swollen the pauper and criminal class. The statistics prove that a large proportion of our criminals and convicts are of foreign birth. It is still more significant to note that, in the opinion of expert observers, the first generation of foreign-born parentage, in the cities at least, make a worse record than the migrating parents.
Bad Effects of New Environments
If this be so, the new environment is producing deterioration and degeneracy instead of improvement. An Italian of education, working among his people, told the writer that the Italian boys and girls born here, or coming at a very early age, were much more lawless and disorderly and difficult to deal with than their fathers and mothers. They had imbibed all the worst features of our life, its independence, its defiance of parental authority, its selfishness, rudeness, and vices, while they lacked the reverence, courtesy, and spirit of obedience native to the Italian-born. This is substantiated by many witnesses who have labored among the foreign element. The Americanization these children are getting is largely of the worst type—the type that we should like to see emigrate to European countries. And it is confined to no one race, but common to all. Professor Boyesen, for instance, a Norwegian-American, who blamed the ideas gained in the public schools for some of the results seen in the young hoodlums and roughs of foreign parentage, said that worthy German and Scandinavian fathers complained bitterly that they could not govern their children in this country. Their sons took to the streets, and if disciplined left home entirely; and they attributed this to the spirit of irresponsible independence in the air. This is perhaps one of the inevitable penalties of individual liberty.
III. Various Effects of Immigration
Making Life too Cheap
The introduction through immigration of a lower standard of living has been shown in preceding chapters. The point to be appreciated is that in this matter we are not dealing with the immigration of individual paupers and cheap workingmen, but with the influx of whole classes that threaten to degrade our material civilization. There are in America entire communities which live on a different plane, and form colonies as foreign to American ideas and life as anything in Europe can show. They have organized their own social life and fixed their own standards, instead of rising to ours. The results are plain all over the country. Immigration has cheapened more than wages in certain lines, it has cheapened life, until the coal barons could say, "It is cheaper to store men than coal." But men may be too cheap.
Good Qualities Bad if Abused