The northern Italians are well thought of in the countries to which they have gone. The southern Italians seem to be far inferior in quality. While the country of their origin, Magna Græcia, two thousand five hundred years ago was the source of a large part of the world's progress in civilization, it is doubtful whether the reader can name a single man produced in that region during the last two thousand years, whose ability or eminence was such as to give him a worthy place in the world's history.
Add to this that the United States did not receive even the best of the southern Italian population, but in some instances rather the part that the local authorities were most happy to get rid of, and it is easy to understand how the Italian children in the American schools have shown themselves in almost every test to be a group apart, widely separated from every other white racial group and close to the Negro-Mulatto children in their ability.
Of the non-English-speaking peoples who have arrived in the United States during the last century, the 4,500,000 of Italians are outnumbered by only one group, namely, the nearly 6,000,000 Germans.
The Italians have been more inclined to return home than some others. In all the immigration, it has been observed that a considerable proportion of the immigrants stayed only temporarily, sometimes for a season of work, sometimes for a generation or until they had accumulated enough money to return to the "Old Country" and live on their investments. It is usually figured that the arrivals should be diminished by about one-third to give the net of permanent immigration. There are of course exceptions—thus it is relatively rare for a Jew who came to the United States to move out of the country later.
During the sixteen years, 1908-23, the total alien emigration from the United States was 35 per cent of the total alien immigration, and the differences between the racial groups in respect to this tendency were immense.[10]
This ebb and flow of migration is often overlooked. It is impossible to understand the population figures without bearing it in mind.
While the departure of so many unassimilable aliens is highly favorable, the fact that migratory cheap labor thus floats into and out of the country to compete with the native white, may of course have most serious effects socially and economically on the older stock. Fortunately, this has now been stopped by suitable restrictions.
Taking a long view over the whole history of immigration into the United States in the century and a half before 1930 one sees that approximately half of the total was from the countries of northern and western Europe, which are largely and some distinctly Nordic in population, and which sent us people who, in most cases, were easily assimilated by the Native Americans. Most of these came in during the first century of the Republic's life, as pointed out above.
After 1890 the tide turned strongly to southern and eastern Europe, the countries of which in 1913 (the last year of unrestricted immigration) sent 85 per cent of the total as against 15 per cent from northern and western Europe. The main contributors to this later stream, often called the "new immigration" as distinct from the "old immigration" were, in order of importance, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire.
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