II
WHY DO THEY COME?
Migration. Why do such vast armies of human beings leave their homes? Why do they travel weary miles over land and sea and suffer such hardships and privations? The causes would indeed be urgent that would induce us to take a like journey and leave behind our pleasant, comfortable homes. Can it be that the home of the immigrant is not pleasant and comfortable? As we continue our study we shall find at least some of the reasons for this greatest migration in history.
On a beautiful day in autumn you may have seen large flocks of swallows wheeling around the steeple of some old church—“a river of winged life.” Some one has told you they are gathering before they migrate. “Oh, yes,” you say, “they are going away because they do not like the cold winter.” In the spring, you have seen a great moving V in the sky all made of birds, and some one has cried out, “There go the wild geese,” and you are told that they are journeying to the far, desolate North where the summer will soon be and where no one will molest them while they rear their young. So when great companies of people migrate there is a good reason. No one wants to leave a comfortable home without good cause.
You will be interested to study the causes of some of the great migrations in the past. If you will turn to the Book of Exodus you will find there the story of a vast human river of slaves flowing out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, into the wilderness. Why did they migrate? What drove the Goths down into the pleasant valleys of Italy? Did the richness of the Italian cities, the fertility of the plains, and the indolence of the inhabitants have anything to do with it? What brought the Tartars into China where as Manchus they have ruled 300 years, and where their long rein is now ended? The answer is simple. The Manchus were warlike Tartars, soldiers of fortune of a barren country. The Chinese were peace-loving dwellers in fertile valleys and plains. The better soldier was the victor.
There is no great nation of ancient or modern times but can tell its own story of migration. There once crossed into England a company of many thousands of splendid craftsmen bringing from France the secrets of trades that have helped make England great. What drove these Protestant families from their beloved land? There rang in their ears the solemn tolling of a great palace bell. That bell, sounding over the city of Paris, was the signal for the death of over forty thousand of the noblest Protestants of France. The St. Bartholomew massacre caused the migration.
In recent years a great tide of Irish began to move across the Atlantic. In ten years this mighty tide totaled over one million and a quarter human beings. The reason they came was the failure of the potato crop. The potato was their great food staple, as bread is ours. Great armies of Germans began to come after 1848. It would be interesting for you to find the reason of their coming. How hard it must be for the Southern Italian to leave his beautiful home and exchange his blue skies and hills and mountains for a dark, ill-smelling tenement, or for toil far underground in a mine. Why does he migrate and in numbers so great as to form every year a city the size of Portland, Oregon? We may find the answer farther along in our studies.
“If I were a Russian,” some one says, “I would want to leave home. The winter is so long, there is so much ice and snow, I would be glad to get to a warmer country.” But the Russian loves his winter. He drives his sankey with its hoop of tinkling bells arched high over his horse’s back faster than any other horseman in Europe. In his home is a great brick oven and on top of this the family sleeps, no matter how the storm blows, as warm as a Negro boy in a Southern cotton field. The Russian does not leave his home because of the winter.
WHY THEY BECOME OUR NEIGHBORS
Opportunity. Some one says another name for America is “opportunity.” Amid weeping and “Il Signore vi Benedica,” “God Bless You,” Giuseppe has gone away. He has been earning as contadino (farmer) 20 cents per day and is like a serf tied to the land. He earns in America $1.50 a day, or as much in one day as he earned before in seven. Giuseppe is frugal. He rises in his position to better pay, spends little money, and his bank account goes up until he has a sum that would have seemed a fortune in the little Sicilian village. Then, work slacking, he returns home. His watch and ponderous gold chain, his stylish American clothes, an exhibition of lofty independence, all make him a marked man.