The house on Henry Street

by Lillian D. Wald

It is difficult to find evidence of any serious effort on our part to comprehend the mental reaction upon the immigrant of the American institutions he encounters. Indeed, gathering up the story of the immigrant, I sometimes wonder if he, like the fairies, does not hold up a magic mirror wherein our social ethics are reflected, rather than his own visage.

What we are to the immigrant in our civic, social, and ethical relations is quite as important as what he is to us. We risk destruction of the spirit—that element of life that makes it human—when we disregard our neighbor’s personality.

Recent discussion of immigration bills focuses attention on two points deemed of fundamental importance by the settlement groups.

Three Presidents have vetoed bills for the restriction of immigration by means of a literacy test or by conditions that would virtually deny the right of asylum for political refugees. Once, in addressing a committee of the House on such proposed legislation, I protested against a departure from our tradition and reminded the members of the committee of the splendid Americans who would have been lost to this country had the door been so closed upon them. A young physician of Polish parentage followed, and his cultured diction and attractive appearance lent emphasis to his story. “My father,” he said, “came an illiterate to this country because the priest of his parish happened not to be interested in education, not because my father was indifferent. He has struggled all his life to give his children what he himself could never have, and has worshiped the country that gave us opportunity.”

In his veto of the bill President Wilson admirably formulated his reasons for opposing restriction of this character, and as these are exactly the arguments upon which social workers have based their objections, I cannot do better than quote him here:

“In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radical departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character of their government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum, which have always been open to those who could find nowhere else the right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived to be the natural and inalienable rights of men, and it excludes those to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural capacity.”

The immigrant brings in a steady stream of new life and new blood to the nation. The unskilled have made possible the construction of great engineering works, have helped to build bridges and roadways above and under ground. The number of skilled artisans and craftsmen among immigrants and the contribution they make to the cultural side of our national life are too rarely emphasized. Alas for our educational system! we must still look abroad for the expert cabinet-maker or stone-carver, the weaver of tapestry, or the artistic worker in metals, precious or base.

In another place I have spoken of the rise of certain needle trades from those of sweaters and sweaters’ victims to a standardized industry, with an output estimated at hundreds of millions yearly. The industry of cloak- and suit-making has been to a large extent developed by the immigrants themselves. When the stranger looks upon the loft buildings in other parts of the city, gigantic beehives with the swarms of workers going in and out, he seldom comprehends that great wealth has been created for the community by these humble workers.

The man who now stands at the gates of Ellis Island turns his socially trained mind toward the development of methods for the protection and assimilation of the immigrant after the gates have closed upon him. But the best conceived plans of this Commissioner of Immigration and others who have long studied the question will be fruitless unless, throughout the country, an intelligent and respectful attitude toward the stranger is sedulously cultivated.