FOREWORD
American public sentiment regarding the admission of aliens has undergone recently a profound change. At the end of the nineteenth century a fatuous humanitarianism prevailed and immigrants of all kinds were welcomed to "The Refuge of the Oppressed," regardless of whether they were needed in our industrial development or whether they tended to debase our racial unity.
The "Myth of the Melting Pot" was, at that time, deemed by the unthinking to be a part of our national creed.
This general attitude was availed of and encouraged by the steamship companies, which felt the need of the supply of live freight. The leading industrialists and railroad builders were equally opposed to any check on the free entry of cheap labor. Restrictionists were active, but in number they were relatively few, until the World War aroused the public to the danger of mass migration from the countries of devastated and impoverished Europe.
As a result of the problems raised by the World War, a stringent immigration law was passed in 1924 and is now in force. This law[1] has for its basic principle a provision that the total number of persons allowed to enter the United States from countries to which quotas have been assigned shall be so apportioned as to constitute a cross section of the then existent white population of the United States. This is the so-called National Origins provision.
A controversy immediately arose over this new basis, as it was to the interest of every national and religious group of aliens now here to exaggerate the importance and size of its contribution to the population of our country, especially in Colonial times. This was particularly true of immigrants from those nations, such as Germany and Ireland, the quotas of which were greatly reduced under the new law. The purpose of this opposition was to warp public opinion in regard to the merits of various national groups and to exaggerate the non-Anglo-Saxon elements in the old Colonial population.
This book is an effort to make an estimate of the various elements, national and racial, existing in the present population of the United States and to trace their arrival and subsequent spread.
In the days of our fathers the white population of the United States was practically homogeneous. Racially it was preponderantly English and Nordic. At the end of the Colonial period we had a population about 90 per cent Nordic and over 80 per cent British in origin. In spite of the intrusion of two foreign elements of importance, both nevertheless chiefly Nordic, our population and our institutions remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon down to the time of the Civil War. Since that time there has been an ever-increasing tendency to change the nature of this once "American" people into a mosaic of national, racial, and religious groups. The question to what extent this transformation has gone deserves careful study.
The draft lists for the American army in the large cities during the World War showed an amazing collection of foreign names. These lists are most dramatic indications of the substantial modifications of the original Anglo-Saxon character of the population which have occurred. A vivid illustration is found in a war poster issued by an enthusiastic clerk of foreign extraction in the Treasury Department during one of the appeals for Liberty Loans. A Howard Chandler Christy girl of pure Nordic type was shown pointing with pride to a list of names, saying "Americans All." The list was: