Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

The “old immigration” was from the North of Europe. It was of Germanic stock. It was predominantly Protestant. But the most important fact of all and the fact most usually ignored is an economic fact. The early immigrant found a broad continent awaiting him, peopled only by Indians. He became a free man. He took up a homestead. He ceased to belong to any one else. He built for himself. He paid no rent, he took no orders, he kept what he produced, and was inspired by hope and ambition to develop his powers. It was economic, not political, freedom that distinguishes the “old immigration” from the “new.”

The “new immigration” is from Southern and Central Europe. It is Latin and Slavic. It is largely Catholic. It, too, is poor. It, too, is driven out by oppression, mostly economic and for the most part landed. Almost every wave of immigration has been in some way related to changes for the worse in the landed systems of Europe. Wherever the poverty has been the most distressing, there the impulse to move has been the strongest. It has been the poverty of Europe that has determined our immigration from the 17th century until now.

The ethnic difference is secondary. So is the religious. The fundamental fact that distinguishes the “old immigration” from the “new” is economic. The “new immigration” works for the “old.” It found the free land all taken up. The public domain had passed into the hand of the Pacific railroads, into great manorial estates. Land thieves had repeated the acts of the British Parliament of the 18th century. The Westward movement of peoples that had been going on from the beginning of time came to an end when the pioneer of the 80’s and 90’s found only the bad lands left for settlement. That ended an era. It closed the land to settlement and sent the immigrant to the city. The peasant of Europe has become the miner and the mill worker. He left one kind of serfdom to take up another. It is this that distinguishes the “old immigrant” from the “new.” It is this that distinguishes the old America from the America of to-day. And the problem of immigration, like the problem of America, is the re-establishment of economic democracy. The protective tariff bred exotic industry. The employer wanted cheap labour. The mine owners and mill owners combined with the steamship companies to stimulate immigration. They sent agents abroad. They brought in gangs from Southern and Central Europe. They herded them in mining camps, in mill towns, in the tenements. The closing of the public domain and the rise of monopoly industry marks the turning point in immigration. It marks the beginning of the immigration “problem.” It is partly ethnic, but largely economic.

The “new immigration” from Southern and Central Europe began to increase in volume about 1890. It came from Southern rather than Northern Italy, from Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Russia, the Balkans, and the Levant. There was a sprinkling of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants. In 1914 South and Central European immigration amounted to 683,000, while the North European immigration was but 220,000. Of the former 296,000 came from Italy, 123,000 from Poland, 45,000 from Russia, and 45,000 from Hungary. These figures do not include Jewish immigrants, who numbered 138,000. Of the North European immigrants 105,000 came from the British Isles, 80,000 came from Germany, and 36,000 from the Scandinavian countries.

Of the 14,000,000 persons of foreign birth now in the country, a very large percentage is of South and Central European stock.

We are accustomed to think of the old immigration and the new immigration in terms of races and religions. And much of the present-day hostility to immigration comes from the inexplicable prejudice which has recently sprung up against persons of differing races and religions. It is assumed that the new immigration is poor and ignorant because it is ethnically unfitted for anything different and that it prefers the tenement and the mining camp to American standards of living and culture. But the newly arrived immigrant goes to the mines and the crowded city not from choice but from necessity. He lives in colonies with his fellows largely because the employing class prefers that he be segregated and has no interest in his physical comfort or welfare. The alien has been a commodity, not a human being; he has been far cheaper than a machine because he provided his own capital cost and makes provision for his own depreciation and decay. He has been bought in the slums of Europe for his passage money and he can be left to starve when bad times or industrial power throws him on his own resources. The important difference between the “old immigration” and the “new immigration” is not ethnic. It is not religious. It is economic. The “old immigration” has become the owning and employing class, while the “new immigration” is the servile and dependent class. This is the real, the important difference between the “old immigration” and the “new.” The former owns the resources of America. The economic division coincides roughly with the race division.

When economic privilege becomes ascendant fear is born. It is born of a subconscious realization on the part of the privileged classes that their privileges rest on an unjust if not an unstable foundation. Fear is the parent of hate, and back of other explanations of the present demand for exclusion of the alien is fear. It is fear that gave birth to the persecution and ruthless official and semi-official activity first against all aliens under the White Slave Act and similar laws, next against the Germans, and later against the “reds.” An economic psychology born of injustice explains our present attitude toward the alien just as a different economic psychology explained our attitude during the first two and a half centuries of our life when it was the consuming desire of statesmen, real-estate speculators, and exploiters to people the continent and develop our industries and resources as rapidly as possible.

The “immigration problem,” so called, has always been and always will be an economic problem. There are many people who feel that there is an inherent superiority in the Anglo-Saxon race; that it has a better mind, greater virtue, and a better reason for existence and expansion than any other race. They insist there are eugenic reasons for excluding immigration from South and Central Europe; they would preserve America for people of Anglo-Saxon stock. As an immigration official I presided over Ellis Island for five years. During this time probably a million immigrants arrived at the port of New York. They were for the most part poor. They had that in common with the early immigrant. They had other qualities in common. They were ambitious and filled with hope. They were for the most part kindly and moved by the same human and domestic virtues as other peoples. And it is to me an open question whether the “new immigration,” if given a virgin continent, and the hope and stimulus which springs from such opportunity, would not develop the same qualities of mind and of character that we assume to be the more or less exclusive characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race. There is also reason for believing that the warmer temperament, the emotional qualities, and the love of the arts that characterize the South and Central European would produce a race blend, under proper economic conditions, that would result in a better race than one of pure Northern extraction. For it is to be remembered that it was not political liberty, religious liberty, or personal liberty that changed the early immigrant of Northern Europe into the American of to-day. His qualities were born of economic conditions, of a free continent, of land to be had for the asking, of equal opportunity with his fellows to make his life what he would have it to be. The old immigrant recognized no master but himself. He was the equal of his neighbours in every respect. He knew no inferiority complex born of a servile relationship. It was this rather than our constitutions and laws that made the American of the first three centuries what he was. It was this alchemy that changed the serf of Northern Europe into the self-reliant freeman of America.

The immigration problem was born when this early economic opportunity came to an end. When the free land was all gone, the immigrant had to work for somebody else. He went to the mines and the city tenement not from the choice but from necessity. He took the first job that offered. When established he sent for his brother, his neighbour, or his friend. He, too, went to the mining camp or the slum. Colonies appeared. The alien became segregated. He lived by himself. And he developed the qualities that would be developed by any race under similar conditions. He, too, feared. He was known as a Dago, Wop, Hunkie. To him government meant a policeman, a health officer, and an immigration inspector—all agencies to be feared. He slowly learned to unionize. He came to understand group action. He found in his craft organization the only protection against the employers, and in the political boss the only protection against agencies that interfered with his personal and domestic life. The immigrant soon learned that our immigration laws were shaped by economic motives. He learned that he was in danger of being deported if he did not work. The menace which hangs over the immigrant during his early years is the phrase “likely to become a public charge.” And this alleged reason for deportation covers a multitude of other excuses which can be used as it is used—as a drag-net accusation. So the immigrant feels and justly feels that what we want of him is to work, to work for some one else, and to accept what is offered and be content. For within the last few years the doctrine has become accepted by him and by the nation as well that the alien must not complain, he must not be an agitator, he must not protest against the established industrial order or the place which he occupies within it. This has heightened his fear complex. It has tended to establish his inferiority relationship.

Our legislative attitude toward the alien has mirrored the economic conditions of the country. Up to about the middle of the last century we had no restrictive laws of any kind. America was free to all comers. We wanted population. Western States pleaded for settlers. They drew them from the East as they drew them from Europe. We were hospitable to the oppressed. We opened our arms to revolutionary leaders. We had no fears. Experience had shown that the poorest of Europe, even the classified criminals of Europe, would quickly Americanize themselves under the stimulus of new opportunity in a virgin land where all men were potentially equal. For generations there was fear that the American continent could never be fully peopled.