Forced migration

“ 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. ”

“ Immigration is thus, from the racial standpoint, a form of procreation, and like the more immediate form of procreation it may be either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse. Human history is largely the [Pg 253] story of migrations, making now for good and now for ill. Migration peopled Europe with superior white stocks displacing ape-like aborigines, and settled North America with Nordics instead of nomad redskins. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Migration has been one of the mighty forces that have been reshaping society. The American people are being altered by it, and it is a question whether America will maintain its national characteristics if the volume of immigration continues unchecked. Europe has been deeply affected, and the people who constitute the migrating mass have been changed most of all. And the end is not yet.
The immigrant constitutes one of the problems of society. Never has there been in history such a race movement as that which has added to one nation a population of more than twenty million in a half century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ On the contrary, broken in spirit and stricken with disease at home, the wretched victims whom you have hitherto kidnapped for a bounty, confined in depots, put under hatches and carried across the ocean—forced into "voluntary immigration," have done little but lie down and die on the pseudo soil of freedom. ”

“ The foreign laborer has been called home to bear arms for his country. The daily death toll and waste and the recently enacted immigration law make it certain that he will not soon return in great numbers. ”

“ Herein lies the great difference between migration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominated when the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of our era. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. ”

“ In order to bring about important changes in that respect by immigration, it must be immigration in mass; and people of Germanic blood will not immigrate in mass to the tropics. The bulk of the population, that is, the decisive element in democratic government, consists everywhere of the laboring people; and all efforts to get men of Germanic blood to become the bulk, or even a large part, of the laboring force of any tropical country, have utterly failed. ”

“ Had the great migrations of later times been as peaceful as that of Abraham, the annals of humanity would have been less troubled than we find them. But the subsequent movements of population were migrations of masses of people, forced from their native soil by extraneous pressure or lured away by the incitements of conquest, or by both agencies combined, and such movements must in their very nature, be violent and sanguinary.
The earliest peoples required for their sustenance far more space than do equal numbers in a more civilized state. ”

“ It is through this process that they acquire the means and facilities for emigration which are necessary for the improvement of every race that has ever made any improvement in the history of man. The stronger races satisfy this necessity of their condition by armed emigration; the weaker are made to do it by forced emigration; and history shows that the African has performed his share of that process, from an age beyond the date of the pyramids, in the caravan of the slave trader. ”

“ In other words, there are not the hindrances to free migration between the various strata of society that obtain in other lands. Not only is that migration continually taking place, but there are very few who are not touched by a consciousness of it. ”

“ The comparison of the conditions which exist, or which he believes to exist, in the United States, with those in his own land has still sufficient power to arouse those feelings of discontent which are necessary to migration. ”

“ But that law is perverted by those who resist emigration under the circumstances to which I have alluded. What is to become of the surplus population, if it be not allowed a space wherein to fertilize the virgin soil, and supply its wants? If its own land denies it the means of life, must it die, that some philosopher may triumph in his doctrines?
It is very true that colonization frequently terminates disastrously, and that instances might be cited, in which emigrants have suffered terrible privations, and have even fallen beneath the insalubrity of unaccustomed climates. ”

“ In the advance of a community a point is sooner or later reached at which any further addition to population does not increase the proportional amount of wealth, and then immigration may justly take the place which emigration used to occupy in the minds of the statesmen of older countries, viz., as a danger to the welfare of society. ”

“ The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands of war industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or by the pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the South and Southwest. ”

“ With the free land gone and the cities crowded to overflowing, the door of immigration, though guarded, nevertheless remains open and the pressure of the old-world peoples continues. Where can they go? They are filling in the vacant spots of the older States, the abandoned farms, stagnant half-empty villages, undrained swamps, uninviting rocky hillsides. This infiltration of foreigners possessing themselves of rejected and abandoned land, which has only recently begun, shows that the peasant's instinct for the soil will reassert itself when the means are available and the way opens. ”

“ Colonization [Pg 342] as a Remedy for Migration; The Successful Migrant; Confusing Movements; The Exodus to the West; The Migration of the Talented Tenth, and The Exodus during the World War.
In the discussion of the Successful Migrant much information is given us of individuals who succeeded by sheer grit in making their way to freedom, and in some cases in building neat fortunes for themselves and their families. The charge that the Negro appears to be naturally migratory, an assertion which comes to light in recent studies in economic progress, is declared untrue. ”

“ Such a plan of emigration, if rendered practicable to them, might not only be the means of abolishing the horrid custom of destroying children as it would remove the plea of necessity but might lead to other important purposes. A great continent would be converted from a desert to a populous country ”

“ The oppression may manifest itself in various disadvantages, imposed on other interests of life, but which are primarily due to religious differences. The great historical example of this class of causes is found in the case of the Jews.
All of these kinds of causes may overlap, and almost always two or more of them exist in conjunction. Cases where social causes alone account for a migration are rare. They are frequently, however, a contributory factor. The economic causes are by far the most important and universal, though we need frequently to look for other causes back of them. ”

“ The mere statement of the case is sufficient to show that the incorporation of the American tropics in our National system would essentially transform the constituency of our Government, and be fraught with incalculable dangers to the vitality of our democratic institutions. Many of our fellow-citizens are greatly disturbed by the immigration into this country of a few hundred thousand Italians, Slavs and Hungarians. ”

“ Do you not know that no sooner will immigration of that character numerously flow in there than it will try to crowd out the inhabitants, or to press them forcibly into the service of their eager appetites? May not a state of things arise under which the rapid extermination of the natives, although cruel in itself, might be the most lenient fate that could overtake them? ”

“ The South has refused to accept immigration as a means of supplying our demands for labor. The farmers stand up and howl about preserving the pure blood of the South and invent all sorts of reasons for prohibiting the immigration of the same classes of people who have been making the North and East rich for years; the same classes that build the eighth wonder of the world—the Middle West. Now, if we are going to prohibit immigration, we must consider the economic status sufficiently seriously to preserve the only reliable supply of labor which we have ever known. ”

“ They differ widely in specific cases, so much so that it is scarcely possible to lay down any general rules or conclusions which will be of value. They manifest themselves under three main heads, viz. the density of population, the physical stock, and the customs and institutions, or mores. The most obvious effect, and the one which is commonly assumed to follow any migration, is a decrease in the population of the country of source, and an increase in that of the country of destination. ”

“ Hence, distance from the centres of civilization, chronic misrule and stupid superstitions, are effectual obstacles to all immigration, except that a main armee. This is evidently the sole way to protect the frontier, and if duly carried out it might succeed in re- pressing revolutions. ”

“ The history of the world from the days of Moses to the present shows that where one race has been subjugated, oppressed or proscribed by another and exists in large numbers, permanent relief has come in one or two ways—amalgamation or migration. The thought of amalgamation is not to be entertained. If conditions in the South for the colored man are to be permanently improved, many of those who now live there should migrate and scatter throughout the North, East and West. ”

“ Even civilized man, in his highest development, has his seasonal journeyings, from his summer home to his winter home, and back. But none of these comings and goings deserve to be included as true movements of peoples, or to be called migrations in the present sense. Migration involves an actual and permanent change of residence. It thus becomes evident that migrations can occur only in the most rudimentary form among people in the hunting stage ”

“ MANY of the evils resulting from the enormous immigration of aliens into this country during recent years have been much aggravated by the congestion of these aliens in the slums of our large northern cities. For this reason, most of those who have studied the immigration problem seriously have come to the conclusion that if these immigrants could be removed from the slums, and distributed over the agricultural districts of the west and south, all the difficulties which are now met with in educating and Americanizing these foreigners could easily be disposed of. ”

“ Owing to these unsatisfactory conditions and the inability of employers to ameliorate them, the migration was to some extent discouraged, and in a few cases a number of the migrants returned to their homes in the South, so that the number that actually came into the State is much less than it would have been, had it been possible to receive and adequately accommodate the negroes in their new homes. ”

“ Where social causes of migration exist, the dissatisfaction arises from some fault in the social organization. Some classes or individuals are subjected to a feeling of inferiority to other classes or individuals. A caste, or aristocratic, organization of society gives certain classes an advantage over others, and makes it impossible for the lower classes to rise to a higher level. In case people living under these conditions learn of another region where advancement is possible, migration may easily ensue. ”

“ Wide tracts of the vast territory which is governed by the Russian sceptre, great countries according to our ideas, have never been used as penal colonies at all, and will probably always remain free of those forced immigrants, who cause the settled population much more disagreeableness, not to say suffering, than they have to endure themselves. ”