published by the National Geographic Society

“ The war in Europe has largely closed the gates of that continent to the emigrant. But three short years ago Ellis Island, the greatest immigrant gateway in the world, was one of the busiest places on the face of the earth. The wheels of the great machine that carried the incoming alien through the doors of America turned fast and long. Morning, noon, and night, the men who manned this wonderful mechanism labored as seldom men have to work in order to keep the machine moving fast enough to take care of the vast flood of humanity presenting itself there for inspection and adoption. ”

“ In everything that goes to show good citizenship the grandchild of the immigrant stands the statistical test as well as the child of native parentage. How many immigrants we shall receive in the future no one can say. But, assuming that we have no immigration, and that the United States will grow as fast during the three centuries ahead of us as Europe grew from 1812 to 1912, we will have a population of nearly 500,000,000 in 2217, or approximately 166 to the square mile. ”

“ Military necessity must be served, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of those who would have come to man our ever-expanding industries are now on the battlefields of Europe, some still surviving the awful avalanche of fire and steel, and others, alas, asleep in those last trenches where the unending truce of death has stilled the enmities of life! ”

“ Furthermore, no State, no nation, no continent has ever before staggered under such an overwhelming debt. If the war were to end now, its financial obligations alone, to say nothing of the devastation, would reach a total of $60,000,000,000. Think of a continent, with much of the flower of its brains and brawn either dead or maimed, and vast areas of its productive territory in ruins, facing a debt whose interest charges alone annually will equal the cost of six Panama canals! ”

“ In New York the foreigners colonize, as on the East Side; in Calumet it is the native population that colonizes, the American colony there being known as Houghton.
Americans sometimes are inclined to complain about the lowering of wage standards through the advent of the “new” immigrant. Where once the native citizen and the home-builder from northwestern Europe had to engage in ditch digging and in dirty and dangerous occupations, the coming of the “new” stream of humanity has released them from such task and has permitted them to take higher positions in the industrial world. ”

“ The war's relation to immigration But what of the morrow of American immigration? Will the war, whose military necessities all but stopped the immigrant tide from Europe, be followed by a peace whose economic opportunities will have the same effect? ”

“ With such a surprising number of people among us who first beheld the light of day under flags now flying over Europe's battlefields, does it not speak well for our country's adopted children that there have been no more evidences of hyphenism than the past thirty months have disclosed? ”

“ The immigrant's preference for city life Another striking fact of our immigration situation is the unusual preference of the foreign born and their children for the cities. Of the 35,000,000 foreign-stock whites living in the United States, approximately 23,000,000 live in the cities. In only 14 of the 50 leading cities of the country do the whites of full native parentage constitute as much as half of the total population. Only one-fifth of the population of New York and Chicago is of native white ancestry. ”

“ When we take the German immigration of the United States between 1776 and 1890 and compare it with that from other countries, a somewhat startling result, and one usually unsuspected, is disclosed. The total arrivals of aliens in those 114 years aggregated 15,689,000, of whom more than 6,000,000 were British and Irish and 5,125,000 were Germans, which shows that one alien out of every three arriving in America during more than a century of our existence was a German. Only the United Kingdom shows a greater proportion. ”

“ Moving into better quarters Go to New York or any other principal city, and you will find that the quarters that were once occupied by the Germans, the Irish, the English, and the Scandinavians are now occupied by the Italians, the Slavs, and the immigrant Jew. Their coming has permitted the foreign born who came in earlier decades to command better positions and to live under better conditions than they otherwise could have done.
From whatever country the immigrant comes, he is, as a rule, above the average of the working classes in his community ”

“ Although Austro-Hungarians began to immigrate in considerable numbers only when the arrivals from western Europe had begun to fall off, sufficient have come from the dual monarchy to populate the State of Texas to its present density. Italy has sent us enough of her people to duplicate the population of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, while England's and Scotland's contribution, 3,889,000 in all, together with Ireland's 4,500,000, gives a total of 8,389,000, or plenty to populate all of the States lying west of Texas and the Dakotas. ”

“ In the early days the people who came were largely of the sturdy pioneer type. A great many of them could neither read nor write, while most of those who could were able to do so only in a limited way. The transpositions in many names in America came from the carelessness or inability of public officials in spelling men's names straight in deeds, wills, and other documents. ”

“ That the alien's children are less illiterate than he is; that they commit less crime than he does, and have less tendency to insanity than he is shown by the statistics gathered by the United States Bureau of the Census and by the Immigration Commission of 1911. ”

“ The Irish, German, Welsh, and Scandinavian within our gates, along with the native American working-man, are now able to give their time almost wholly to work in the field of skilled labor, and as overseer for the “new” immigrant in the industrial centers. ”

“ Agricultural students have declared that the soil of the United States has a sustaining power of 500 to the square mile. Assuming that one-third of the country is occupied by waste land, we have room on this basis for 900,000,000 people. ”

“ Great Britain, with a little less than four million, and Scandinavia, with something less than two million, have, together with Germany, contributed more than half of the total immigration to our shores since the beginning of the Revolutionary War. ”

“ Although the people of foreign birth constitute only one-seventh of the country's population, they contribute nearly one-fourth (22 per cent) of the arm-bearing strength of the nation. At the last census many of the States had a greater number of foreign-born men of arm-bearing age than they had of native-ancestry citizens, among them Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. ”

“ Not long ago America crossed the hundred-million line in the number of its citizens, and it is interesting to note the composition of that population.
To begin with, there are 11,000,000 colored people, including negroes, Indians, Chinese, etc. Then there are 14,500,000 people of foreign birth among us. In addition to these, there are 14,000,000 children of foreign-born fathers and mothers and 6,500,000 children of foreign-born fathers and native mothers, or vice versa. When all of these have been deducted from the 100,000,000, only 54,000,000 remain of full white native ancestry. ”

“ Of more than 8,000,000 people of German birth and immediate ancestry among us, less than 1,000,000 fail to have the background of birth or long residence in America behind them.
Ireland's gift to America It is interesting to note the other foreign elements that have entered into the make-up of American population since 1776. What a wealth of blood that wonderful little island, Ireland, has given us! More Irish people have crossed the seas to become part of us than have remained behind. ”

“ Notable people of foreign stock Yet the 35,000,000 American people who are of foreign stock—that is, foreign born or the children of a foreign-born parent—include some of the most illustrious citizens of our Republic. ”

“ Taking the States where those of foreign birth and their sons together constitute a major portion of the men between the ages of 18 and 44, it will be found that the list includes the above States and the following: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Washington, and California—in all 20 States. We have considerably over 20,000,000 men of military age in the United States. ”

“ Although the immigrants who have flocked to our shores since 1776 have mingled their blood with pre-Revolution strains until the American of unadulterated colonial ancestry is the exception and not the rule; although a great political party was formed and the presidential campaign of 1856 was fought with the immigration question as practically the paramount issue ”

“ In Virginia, Governor Berkeley thanked God that there were no free schools, nor printing presses, and expressed the hope that they would not arrive during his century, since he believed that learning brought disobedience, heresy, and sects into the world, and printing developed them. At one time in Virginia, out of 12,455 male adults who signed deeds and depositions, 40 per cent made their marks. ”

“ The effect of the literacy test applied to the immigration of the future may be shown by a few figures. More than one-fourth of all the immigrants admitted to the United States in the past two decades who were over 14 could neither read nor write. ”

“ Governor Berkeley opposed the printing press In 1718 three hundred and nineteen Scotch-Irish empowered their agent to negotiate terms with the Governor of Massachusetts for their settlement in that colony. Ninety-six per cent of the whole number wrote their names out in full. It has been said that at that time in no other part of the British Empire could such a proportion of men miscellaneously selected have written their names. Twenty-six per cent of the German male immigrants above sixteen years of age who came to America in the first half of the eighteenth century made their marks. ”

“ And so the South, unable to solve its economic difficulties at once, had to sit by and see thousands of its people go into the North and West to start over again. The end of the Russo-Japanese War brought great hordes of Russians to our shores, economic necessity impelling them to leave their homelands. ”

“ The story of Calumet, in the northern part of Michigan, shows how much of a monopoly the immigrant has in the mining industry in America. It is a city of 45,000, who live and work in the copper mines under Lake Superior. Twenty different races share in its population, and not even Babel heard more tongues. Sixteen nationalities are represented on its school-teaching force. ”

“ The religious wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sent thousands and tens of thousands of French Huguenots, German Protestants, and English Puritans to our shores. One American-built vessel is said to have made 116 round trips between New York and Liverpool in nineteen years, during which time it brought 30,000 immigrants to America. ”

“ Seven out of every ten of those who work in our iron and steel industries are drawn from this class; seven out of ten of our bituminous coal miners belong to it. Three out of four of those who work in packing towns were born abroad, or are children of those who were born abroad; four out of five of those who make our silk goods, seven out of eight of those employed in our woolen mills, nine out of ten of those who refine our petroleum, and nineteen out of twenty of those who manufacture our sugar are immigrants or children of immigrants. ”

“ The land aristocracy was promoted by the provision that a planter might add fifty additional acres of land for every person he would transport into Virginia at his own cost. When the Pilgrims were outfitting, each immigrant was rated at a capital of ten pounds. ”