Great Migration

“ As to the way in which these migrations are accomplished, we are apt to be misled by the picture—no doubt a very incorrect 49one—which has remained in our minds from our school-days, in connection with the migration par excellence—the great westward movement of our own forefathers. ”

“ Looking over a period of nearly three centuries, it is probably true that the Germans have crossed the ocean in larger numbers than any other race. We have already noted the large migration during the eighteenth century, and the official records show that since 1820 there have entered our ports more than 5,200,000 Germans, while Ireland was sending 4,000,000 and Great Britain 3,300,000. ”

“ The migration of 32,102,671 persons to the United States, between 1820 and 1914, from all parts of the world, has been a movement of peoples compared with which the migrations of the Germanic tribes—Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Suevi, Danes, Burgundians, Huns—into the old Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries pale into insignificance. No such great movement of peoples was ever known before in history, and the assimilative power of the American nation has not been equal to the task. ”

“ Having thus considered some of the essential features of migration as a whole, it will be well to distinguish further between the four great types of migrations to 10which reference has been made. One of the earliest, simplest, and most natural of migratory movements is the invasion. ”

“ Ancient migrations were, moreover, somewhat different from modern immigration and emigration. Ancient migrations were largely those of peoples or tribes, while in modern times migration is more of an individual matter. ”

“ Most scholars suppose that there were different migrations, and that each movement westward was accomplished slowly, centuries intervening between their departure from Central Asia and their permanent settlement in Europe. The earliest migration was probably that of the tribes who took possession of [Pg 2] Greece and Italy; who first acquired, and for more than a thousand years maintained, their ascendency over all other branches of their common family; who, in fact, laid the basis for the civilization of the world. ”

“ The Huns, for example, came into Europe as a nation, but the immigration into the United States at the present time is wholly an individual movement. The causes of migration are more or less universal, but corresponding to the difference in ancient and modern migrations we find the causes varying somewhat in ancient and modern times. The causes of ancient migrations and the primary causes of all migrations seem to be: (1) lack of food; (2) lack of territory for an expanding population; (3) war. In modern times we find other causes operating, like, (4) the labor market ”

“ This would indicate that the long lines of eastward and westward migration were open and favorable to the arrival in western Europe of new migrants from the far east, including perhaps the most primitive races of man. ”

“ To transplant the civilization of one distant country to another, requires either the simultaneous migration of a large body of the people, or a long and regular intercourse, a constant immigration from the parent race. ”

“ It must have been the chief material cause of man's success in the migratory movement, and with the social development accompanying it must have made migration not only possible, but the only true method of meeting the earliest economic difficulties. It also provides us with the elements of a chronological basis. Behind palæolithic times there is an immensity of time when man struggled with his economic difficulties and spread out slowly and painfully. ”

“ Such, in brief, were the land and the people that furnished one-sixth of our total population and two-fifths of our Southern population. In shifting such a people from the torrid climate of equatorial Africa to the temperate regions of America, and from an environment of savagery to one of civilization, changes more momentous than those of any other migration have occurred. ”

“ The movement of population to the conquered territory may be insignificant, and in this, conquest differs from all the other forms of migratory movements. Consequently the effects on the racial stock of the conquered people may be very slight, and in most cases are. The effect on the mores, on the other hand, including the language, may be profound and lasting. Conquest differs from the other forms of migration also in the fact that the motives belong more nearly to the positive, or attractive, group than in any of the others. ”

“ The movement cannot yet be thoroughly studied, but what information is available indicates that the migration has been almost exclusively to the northern and western industrial districts. Whether it is a temporary dislocation of population due to war-time conditions or a persistent drift cannot yet be foreseen. ”

“ Noble and successful efforts are making by the Bible, Missionary, Tract, Sabbath School, Temperance, and other Societies in the West. Great and rapid changes are taking place, if not to the extent we desire, yet corresponding in a degree with the gigantic march of emigration and population. Many other reasons might be urged to show that its prospective increase of population will vastly exceed the ratio of its retrospective increase, but these are sufficient. ”

“ The significance of these facts does not seem to impress as it should either the public or the farmers. The habit of western migration, bred into the American people, during three centuries of practice is about to be broken. ”

“ Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter which the Twentieth Century will not complete. ”

“ New countries, more especially, have kept an open door for all arrivals. The increase of population has been taken as the great test of advance, and every immigrant was looked on as additional evidence of progress. ”

“ African professionals tend to migrate to Western Europe and North America. Many are dissuaded from returning home by the economic and political crises that have bedeviled the continent over the last few decades. ”

“ If, as is generally believed, the population of America came originally from the Asiatic continent, such an original migration must have taken place so early in the history of the human race that it antedated the use of bronze, iron, or domestic animals in the land from which the migrants came. ”

“ To-day it is a voluntary migration of peoples, and a migration of such proportions and from such distant and unlike civilizations that the problem of assimilating the foreigner has become, particularly in the English-speaking nations and colonies, to which distant and unrelated peoples have turned in largest numbers, [2] a serious national problem. ”

“ It is more likely that one or a series of calamities incident to a primitive race, such as war, pestilence, famine, more or less periodical among the aborigines, was the true cause of their migration. ”

“ SECTION 2.—UNIVERSAL EMIGRATION. We have in our remarks on the Over-Sea Colony referred to the general concensus of opinion on the part of those who have studied the Social Question as to Emigration being the only remedy for the overcrowded population of this country, at the same time showing some of the difficulties which lie in the way of the adoption of the remedy; the dislike of the people to so great a change as is involved in going from one country to another ”

“ Early in this discussion, we saw how closely the prehistoric areas agreed with the historic, suggesting that a type of culture was in some vague manner firmly fixed in a locality. In some respects, such a conclusion is disconcerting, because the traditions of our subject call for a veritable and constant flux of migrations. While our previous discussions have made it apparent that migration is exceptional rather than universal, still, the logical necessities of the case require some movements of population. ”

“ The German migration of the nineteenth century was quite distinct in character from that of the preceding century. The colonial migration was largely induced on religious grounds, but that of the past century was political and economic, with at first a notable prominence of materialism respecting religion. ”

“ The migration from the older parts of the American Confederation to the new territories, which is to all intents and purposes colonization, is what enables population to go on unchecked throughout the Union without having yet diminished the return to industry, or increased the difficulty of earning a subsistence. ”

“ Prehistoric migrations. Among savage and nomadic nations the whole tribe often moves into new territory, either occupying it for the first time or exterminating or driving out the indigenous inhabitants. ”

“ More recent is the problem of the immigration of people representing all the nationalities of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. While until late in the 254second half of the nineteenth century the immigrants consisted almost entirely of people of northwestern Europe, natives of Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and France, the composition of the immigrant masses has changed completely since that time. With the economic development of Germany, German immigration has dwindled down ”

“ Cities grow more rapidly now than formerly, because the excess of deaths over births has been turned into an excess of births over deaths. Thereby the cities are becoming less dependent upon immigration for increase of population than formerly, but the migration still goes on. The causes of migration from country to city are mainly economic. In early stages of culture men are scattered over the country, or at most gathered together in hamlets and villages. ”

“ In analyzing the facts of distribution we shall do well to begin with the causes and effects of migration. Primitive man is in no small degree a wanderer. His small resources often require him to explore large tracts. As population increases the food quest becomes more intense, and thus there come about repeated emigrations which increase the food supply, extend its variety, and draw the pioneers at last into contact with neighboring groups. The farther back we go in the history of the race the clearer it becomes that migrations lie at the root of much of human development. ”

“ There alike has been tested to what extent the European and the African are affected by migration to new regions, and by admixture with diverse races. There can now be witnessed the results of a transference, for upwards of three centuries, of indigenous populations of the Old World to a continent where they have been subjected to many novel geographical, climatic, and social influences. ”

“ The western emigration caused a rush—a migration of neighborhoods in many localities of the older Western States. Following the sun, their pillar of fire, these State founders moved westward, a resistless army of agents of American civilization, and there was a demand for homes on the public lands, and a strong pressure for the enactment of a law which should confine locators to small tracts, and require actual occupation, improvement, and cultivation. ”

“ On the other hand, however, sedentary life and advanced civilization bring rapid increase of population, improved methods of communication, and an enlarged geographical horizon. These conditions encourage and facilitate emigration and colonization, forms of historical movement which have characterized the great commercial peoples of antiquity and the overcrowded nations of modern times. ”

“ In considering the specific causes of the rise of the new immigration we will confine our attention primarily to the countries of Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia, which send us the great bulk of the immigrants, and in which conditions are sufficiently representative to give a satisfactory idea of the nature of the new movement in general. ”

“ We have learnt much in recent years with regard to migration. With one single exception, we know where every one of the summer migrants goes to rear its brood. The haunt of one only—the curlew-sandpiper—still defies discovery. ”

“ First migration of peoples to the southwest, then adaptation of the number of people to the small space by emigration. In the last years, adaptation of the people to insufficient space, by reducing the number of births. ”

“ So with those rivers of men which we call migrations. The ethnic stream may start comparatively pure, but it becomes mixed on the way. From time to time it leaves behind laggard elements which in turn make a new racial blend where they stop. Such were the six thousand Aduatici whom Cæsar found in Belgian Gaul. These were a detachment of the migrating Cimbri, left there in charge of surplus cattle and baggage while the main body went on to Italy.142
Complex currents of migration. ”

“ I believe, then, that if facilities for migration are given by Government action, it will be not only possible but desirable for the increase in the population of the Empire, taken as a whole, to be maintained during the twentieth century. ”

“ Quite different are the folk migrations that occur at the very dawn of the history of the great cultural peoples. The difference between tribal and racial migrations is an important one. When a race migrates, it retains its peculiar characteristics, its traditions, its heroes, and its gods, and transplants these into the new territory. ”

“ We can trace, by unmistakable indications, the gradual western migration of this people, until we find them hemmed in between the younger races and the sea, on the north-west coasts of France, and along the mountainous regions of the west in the British Isles, where the invaders of the more fertile regions of the low countries have not cared to follow them. ”