| Countries | |
| Russia and Poland | 1,243,000 |
| Austria-Hungary | 260,000 |
| Rumania | 103,000 |
| United Kingdom | 73,000 |
| Turkey | 20,000 |
| Germany | 15,000 |
| British North America | 57,000 |
| All other countries | 67,000 |
| ———— | |
| 1,838,000 |
Meanwhile the immigration from northern Europe declined, not only relatively but absolutely, and at the same time the native American, whose ancestry was pre-dominantly Nordic, began to be crowded to the wall. In certain sections of New England that progressive change soon became all too evident and has made them no longer American but foreign communities. The French Canadians, Irish, and Poles took over whole districts and occupied the abandoned farms. The Polish Jews, settling almost entirely in the larger cities, built up a Ghetto population similar in most respects to the congested urbanism of their homeland.
Americans were so obsessed with the idea of a "Refuge for the Oppressed" that they even welcomed the draining into our country of that morass of human misery found in the Polish Ghettos. When the objection arose that there were already 1,000,000 Jews in New York City, an effort was made to divert this migration into Texas, where the wide-open spaces were supposed to provide room for the 7,000,000 Polish Jews.
The German Jews, who also came into this country in smaller numbers at the end of the last century, were of the Alpine type, closely resembling those from Poland, Galicia, and Russia. All of these Jews are in sharp contrast to the Sephardim Jews, a superior group, largely Mediterranean in race, a very few of whom came from Holland to America in Colonial times. These latter had reached Spain by way of North Africa and later fled to Holland to escape the Inquisition.
The immigration from Scandinavia was entirely Nordic. Sweden is purely Nordic, and Norway and Denmark are overwhelmingly so. Lithuania and North Poland are also Nordic lands, as are the German provinces along the Baltic; but South Poland and Galicia are Alpine, as are the majority of the immigrants who come from South Germany. Those from the provinces of the former Austrian Empire are mostly Alpine, although a few Nordics came from the Tyrol.
The Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor, and Armenia sent over practically only Alpine immigrants. French-speaking Switzerland was originally Burgundian territory and contributed some very valuable Nordic racial elements to America. Those from German-speaking Switzerland were largely Alpine.
The period of the great European migration to the United States covered just a century. Prior to that time, since the founding of the Union, most of the immigration had been English and Scotch. Up to 1860, as will be recalled, this British character of the immigration continued, except for the beginning of the great stream of Germans who have been, next to the English, the largest single element in our population.
The early Germans in the United States were, as previously described, mostly Alpines from the upper Rhine—the Palatinate and Swabia. In the '40's the area of the German emigration spread. At first to the western states and provinces, which were much more Nordic in character (Hesse, the Rhineland, Westphalia, Thuringia). All this region had an easy outlet by the Rhine to the seaports; moreover emigration was stimulated by the result of revolutionary activities, which forced many to leave.
After transportation began to be improved by railways, the main currents of emigration began to flow from central and eastern Germany. Emigration reached its first crest in the southwest and west of Germany in the middle of the '50's, its second in Central Germany toward the end of that decade, its third in the eastern part of the empire in the '70's and '80's. This later emigration was, on the whole, more Nordic than the earlier stream.