Immigrant

“ Many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the cities of America. ”

“ The classes in which we are particularly interested are naturally the immigrant and emigrant aliens, for they are the only participants in true immigration movements, according to our definition. The others are merely travelers. Yet they are important and interesting travelers, and the modern problems of immigration cannot be thoroughly understood without taking some consideration of them. As for the aliens in transit, they can be quickly disposed of. ”

“ Each is the product of the qualities the immigrant brought with him and the opportunities he found here to exercise them. The law-abiding, ambitious immigrant who came here a beggar and worked himself into the ranks of the princes found his opportunity in our laws and customs, which enable the common man to make the most of himself. ”

“ Those conditions which are primarily individual to the immigrant himself, and affect the general life of the nation only indirectly, because the immigrant is a resident of that nation. (2) Those conditions which have to do directly with the life of the immigrant as a member of society, and immediately affect the interests and welfare of others besides himself. To the first category belong such matters as housing conditions, food, and standard of living in general, wages, recreations, religious life, certain forms of vice, education, etc. ”

“ Main Immigration Building. It is a busy island. Yet in all the rushing hurry and seeming confusion of a full day, in all the babel of language, the excitement and fright and wonder of the thousands of newly-landed, and in all the manifold and endless details that make up the immigration plant, there is system, silent, watchful, swift, efficient. Five thousand immigrants in a day is no uncommon figure. ”

“ Whether immigration is good for us depends partly on the intrinsic nature of the immigrant and partly on our reactions to his presence. The effects of immigration, produced by the immigrant in partnership with ourselves, some men will approve and some deplore, according to their notions of good and bad. ”

“ Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut out—a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul. ”

“ The emigration agent is often himself a returned immigrant; if not, he utilizes all the influences which arise from the letters, visits, and remittances of actual immigrants to further his ends. The letters from America are often misleading or spurious, used by labor agents in this country to entice others to come. ”

“ But what has a young and penniless immigrant to offer who has had no training in any of the arts or crafts and does not know the language of the land? Apparently2 nothing, and if the present standards had prevailed forty-eight years ago I should have been deported. There are, however, certain things which a young immigrant may bring to this country that are far more precious than any of the things which the present immigration laws prescribe. Did I bring any of these things with me when I landed at Castle Garden in 1874? ”

“ The Immigrant Problem.—An increasing proportion of the city's population is foreign born or of foreign parentage. For a hundred years America has been the goal of the European peasant's ambition, the magnet that has drawn him from interior hamlet and ocean port. ”

“ The most general way of learning of such opportunity is through personal acquaintance or through correspondence with relatives and friends of the immigrant's own nationality who have previously settled on land. These sources of information are considered by the immigrant to be the most reliable, although they have certain drawbacks. ”

“ This social disability of the Slavic peasant is being partially overcome by immigration; for{206} the immigrant who has tasted a little of even our crude freedom with its mixed blessings, who wears our sombre clothing, whose feet are shod with our shoes—he it is of whom it might again be said, poetically and prophetically: “How beautiful are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings of good things.” ”

“ It is true that the immigrant, especially from the north of Europe, is bidden welcome, and is generally well received, but he is expected to be content with shoveling dirt, chopping wood, carrying water, plowing the- 300 - fields, and doing other manual labor, no one disputing his right or his fitness for these occupations. ”

“ The passions and the exertions, the hopes and the fears, the exultations and the despairs, America excites in the immigrant are likely to be intenser than anything he would have experienced in his natal village. ”

“ In the compact colony of his fellow-countrymen, he may be sure of companionship, encouragement, and assistance when needed. It is the most natural thing in the world for an immigrant to want to settle where there are numbers of others of his immediate kind. ”

“ In the report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, for 1904, an official of the bureau who has been conducting extensive investigations in Europe, writes from there as follows: "The average immigrant of to-day is sadly lacking in that courage, intelligence and initiative which characterized the European people who settled in the western states during the eighties." ”

“ The great westward tide of immigration has again begun to rise. Annually to the ports of entry and to the great inland centers of distribution come thousands of immigrant families, strange men and women with young children, unattached girls, and vigorous, simple lads. ”

“ To the European immigrant—that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life—the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity. ”

“ Not only have the religious and political motives almost wholly disappeared in favor of the economic in modern immigration, but the European immigrant of to-day is in no sense going to a new or unknown land, when he embarks for the United States. American life and conditions, particularly economic conditions, are well known in those sections of Europe which furnish our large contingents of immigration. ”

“ The city-dwelling immigrant must be here some three or four years before he knows enough of our language and customs to enable him to be self-supporting away from his own race. It seems also that distribution must be effected individually rather than by colonies. ”

“ Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or to leave the country, for hereafter every immigrant should be treated as a future fellow citizen and not merely as a labor unit. ”

“ The main source of the immigrant current has shifted away from northern and western Europe, to the southern and eastern portions of the continent, whose people are by no means so closely related in physique or so similar in mental characteristics to the people of the United States as the immigrants of earlier periods. ”

“ Focused under the microscope of theoretical analysis, or viewed through the spectacles of common sense, the average immigrant of to-day still shows the markings of virtue that have distinguished the best Americans from the time of the landing at Plymouth to the opening of the Panama Canal. ”

“ The Problem of the European Immigrant.—The problem of the European immigrant is one of assimilation. It is difficult because the alien comes in such large numbers, brings with him a different race heritage, and settles usually among his own people, where American influence reaches him only at second hand. ”

“ The returned immigrants scatter into thousands of villages, rousing them from their commonplaceness by stories of adventure, boasts of mighty deeds of valor and praise or criticism of our strange customs. ”

“ If we would Americanize the immigrant we must seek him out in his daily economic life and see to it that the influences under which he works are calculated to give him the right feeling toward his new home. ”

“ In the popular or theoretical sense an immigrant is a person of foreign birth who is crossing the country’s boundary and entering the United States with intent to remain and become an addition to the population of the country. ”

“ They seem to me to be these: first, that the growth of immigration is a desirable thing for this country from an industrial point of view; second, that the immigrants who arrive at our shores are for the most part good material out of which to make American citizens. Applying these conclusions to the questions which were stated at the outset of this article; first, is it for the advantage of the United States that immigration should be checked or limited? ”

“ What counts here, of course, is not the value the immigrants may have acquired by education or experience, but that fundamental worth which does not depend on opportunity, and which may be transmitted to one's descendants. Now, in the present state of our knowledge, it is perhaps risky to make a comparison in ability between the races which contributed the old immigration and those which [297] are supplying the new immigration. ”

“ The second, and vastly more important, period is several years after arrival, when the immigrant has exhausted the prime of his strength, and becomes one of the unfit in the keen struggle for economic existence. ”

“ The question of the effects of immigration upon the immigrants is perhaps the most difficult of all to determine. It is manifest that it must affect all of their life interests, in their own generation and for many generations to come. ”

“ Yet it is very doubtful if it is possible for even the most exceptional adult immigrant, from the southeastern European races, at least, to become thoroughly assimilated in his lifetime. The barriers of race, set for the most part by Americans, can hardly be 403broken down. The immigrant is still an Italian, or a Slav, or a Greek, as long as he lives, and Americans regard him as in a measure a stranger, no matter how cultivated, or wealthy, or broad-minded he may be. ”

“ THE EXPLOITATION OF IMMIGRANTS. RELIGION. BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, AND DEATHS. RECREATION There is a group of peculiar economic institutions which have been developed by the immigrants in this country, and which are especially characteristic of the new immigration. This group includes the padrone system, the contract labor system, the immigrant bank, and two or three similar institutions, particularly the sweating system, which is now practically dependent on immigrants.
The word “padrone” is adopted from the Italian, and signifies master or “boss.” ”

“ It would be foolhardy to deny that, at the present time, there are immense unassimilated elements in our population,—immigrants of the first or second generation, possibly even of the third. Every foreign-American society, be it Irish, German, Italian, Slovak, or any other, whatever its aims and purposes, is a standing evidence of a group of people who recognize certain affiliations or loyalties which are foreign to the out-and-out American. ”

“ How can we best put the newly naturalized immigrant, alert, well-intentioned, but usually socially and politically unassimilated, in touch with the political issues of the day in their large national bearings, and in their practical expression. ”

“ The Advancing Wave of Civilization HAVE you ever carefully watched the movements or caught the earnest spirit of the immigrant who, after traveling many hundreds of miles along the difficult roads through an unbroken country to a strange land, there seeks a spot where he may build a home for his family? ”

“ Voluntary emigration always calls for the highest combination of the physical and moral virtues. The law of analogy, therefore, might suffice to teach us that with every shipload of immigrants we get a fresh infusion of pioneer blood. But theory is a tight-rope on which every monkey of a logician can balance himself. We practical Americans of the twentieth century like to feel the broad platform of tested facts beneath our feet.
ROUGH WORK AND LOW WAGES FOR THE IMMIGRANT
The fact about the modern immigrant is that he is everywhere continuing the work begun by our pioneer ancestors. ”

“ Again, we are told that the immigrant comes here ignorant and without ideals and standards of life which would make him a safe member of a democracy. Of course, like most broad generalizations, this has a grain of truth when applied to some of the present influx from southern Europe. But when applied to immigrants generally, and especially to the class we have here described, the above judgment is just about the exact opposite of the truth. ”

“ The immigration problem, which I have been discussing in previous numbers of The Arena, cannot be unravelled without considering one important thread which adds to the entanglement. I shall apply to it the term "Inter-migration," a word not found in the dictionary, because it is freshly coined for the purpose. Let me try to define its meaning.
A person is said to migrate when he leaves his native land, seeking a new home in some other country. Around the word emigrant or immigrant hovers always the idea of an exchange of habits, customs, and language of one country with those of another. ”

“ Most naturally he turns to some one of his fellow-countrymen who has been in this country longer. From that time on, sometimes for many years, his career is dominated by the older immigrant to a remarkable degree. ”

“ The point to be emphasized here is that it operates as one of 155the great causes of our present immigration, and that it continues to exert a powerful, and probably increasing, influence, in spite of all the efforts of the legislators and officials of the United States to check it.
The third source of stimulation to emigration is the earlier immigrant himself. He is probably the greatest factor of all in induced immigration, and his influence is utilized in various ways by both emigration agents and labor agents, and made to contribute to the success of their efforts. ”