And this is real. It has been going on for a quarter of a century. States with whole counties filled with Russians voting, and being the banner counties to have prohibition in the State's Constitution; or, like North Dakota, with nearly seventy per cent foreign voters, driving the lottery from them when needing money sorely. Men and women who could scarcely speak the English language living to see their sons senators and governors.
All the dismal prophecies about ruin from the immigrant are disproved as one looks over Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas to-day; and instead of having a great German nation on this side of the Atlantic, as one writer predicted, we have in the great agricultural States some of our stanchest American citizens.
One of the mightiest factors in human life to-day is the language we use. Three centuries ago there were about 6,000,000 using it; to-day 125,000,000 speak the English tongue. The Duke of Argyle was once asked which was the best language. He said, "If I want to be polite I use the French, if I want to be understood I take the English, if I want to praise my Maker I take the Gaelic, my mother-tongue." Foreigners coming here think in their own language, even though they may be able to speak in ours; gradually they come to think in English, but still they dream in their mother-tongue; at last they dream, think, and speak in the language of the land, and become homogeneous with the nation.
God's greatest gift to this New World is the foreigner. The thought came to me while on my way to Savannah: Why did not the discoverers of the Western Hemisphere find a higher civilization than the one they left? Why should God have kept so large a portion of the world hidden from the eyes of Europe for thousands of years? Had he not some grand design that in the fulness of time he would lead Columbus, like Abraham of old, to found a new nation?
Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration has passed by, and in every case you find them behind the times. Strange how prejudice warps our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to God the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Washington said, "I would we were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants. Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the financier, Agassiz the scientist, and thousands of illustrious names, make a strong list. One-twelfth of the land foreigners!—but one-fourth of the Union armies were foreigners too.
When Linnæus was under gardener, the head gardener had a flower he could not raise. He gave it to Linnæus, who took it to the back of a pine, placed broken ice around it, and gave it a northern exposure. In a few days the king with delight asked for the name of the beautiful gem. It was the Forsaken Flower.
So there are millions of our fellow-men in Europe to-day, in a harsh environment, sickly, poor, and ready to die; but when they are transplanted, they find a new home, clothes, food, and, above all, the freedom that makes our land the very paradise for the poor of all lands. These immigrants have made the brown prairie to blossom as the rose, the wilderness to become like the garden of the Lord. They drove the Louisiana Lottery out of North Dakota; they voted for temperance in South Dakota. Their hearts beat warm for their native land, but they are true to their adopted country.
The mixture of the nationalities is the very thing that makes us foremost: it has produced a new type; and if we but do our duty we shall be the arbitrator of the nations. There is no way to lift Europe so fast as to evangelize her sons who come to us. Sixteen per cent go home to live, and these can never forget what they saw here; did we but teach them aright, they would be an army of foreign missionaries, fifty thousand strong, preachers of the gospel to the people in the tongue in which they were born, and thus creating a perpetual Pentecost.
One other great fact needs pointing out. The discovery of this land was by the Latin races; and yet they failed to hold it, lacking the genius for colonization for which the Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminent. During the last fifty years, over 13,000,000 immigrants have come to this land. Great Britain sent nearly 6,000,000; Germany, 4,500,000; Norway and Sweden, 939,603; Denmark, 144,858; the Netherlands, 99,522; Belgium, 42,102. Here we have over 11,000,000 Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian, of the 13,000,000, and almost half of them speaking English, while Italy, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and all other nations sent but 1,708,897 out of the 13,296,157. And we must note also that nearly all of the Latin races came within the last few years; so that we were a nation 50,000,000 strong before many of them came, and eighty per cent of all our people speak English.