Relocation

“ These meditations did not enfeeble my resolution, or slacken my pace. In proportion as I drew near the city, the tokens of its calamitous condition became more apparent. Every farm-house was filled with supernumerary tenants, fugitives from home, and haunting the skirts of the road, eager to detain every passenger with inquiries after news. The passengers were numerous; for the tide of emigration was by no means exhausted. ”

“ Emigration to the West was the only escape, and the difficulties of such an escape, the cost of sustenance for the long journey, on foot, the greater cost of building a cabin in the forest and maintaining one's family till a crop could be harvested, and the necessity of buying the land on which the cabin was to be raised, made the undertaking heroic. ”

“ The emigrants, however, are not all of this stamp. Among them are some of the vilest outcasts in the country. I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition in life, or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey, and after they have reached the land of promise are happy enough to escape from it. ”

“ It is also a point of primary importance, that those persons should emigrate, who, from age, health, character, and circumstances, are best able to contend with the hardships and difficulties of a settler’s life, and it was considered that this object would be most fully attained if the emigration were entirely voluntary. ”

“ The people in the settlements are satisfied with their location. I heard but very little complaint, and what complaints I did hear were, I thought, almost entirely due to the inconvenience incident to emigration, to breaking up their homes, to disposing of their property, to riding distances upon railroads, landing at their destination wearied, to not being so carefully housed and protected for a limited length of time after their arrival, and to their being unacquainted with the country. ”

“ The emigrants lean over the rail, and gaze wistfully at us. Ah, how many thousands of miles they must travel ere they reach their new home! Strange and pitiful it is to think that so few of them will ever see the old home again; and yet there is something bright and hopeful in the spectacle, if we think not of individuals, but of the world's future. ”

“ We have houses to shelter in, beds to sleep on, inns to quarter at,—meat and bread. But as to any of yourselves emigrating—how could you leave property, business, friends to lead the life of a rustic? ”

“ It is true, paupers themselves rarely emigrate, but the persons who were on the out-door relief lists in 1848 have mainly supplied the places of the labourers above them, who have migrated. At the same time, I wish it to be understood that all the emigration arising from bad laws at home is injurious; but the emigration which arises from the discovery of new fertile land, and poverty at home, is beneficial. ”

“ The number of emigrants from fashion or caprice is probably not great; and whom shall we now dare to include under this description, when the humble artizan, the laborious peasant, and the village priest, have ensanguined the scaffold destined for the prince or the prelate?—But if the emigrants be justifiable, the refugees are yet more so. ”

“ Whatever the future may bring forth, then, our immigration at present springs from European sources. [136] Every country on the continent furnishes its contingent, 169large or small. From the cities, towns, and villages, most of all from the rural sections, even to the most remote corners of the back districts, they come, inspired with great hopes by the emigration agents and the labor contractors, aided by friends or relatives or future employers on the other side. Homes and property are mortgaged, the labor of their bodies—even their very souls—are pledged, to pay their passage. ”

“ The residence or continuance of one nation in one place is not of the law of nature, which (being in itself immutable) would admit no transmigration of people or transplantations of nations. But I will propound unto you two grounds of nature, as more proper to this purpose. ”

“ Nothing now remained for me but to return to my country. In crossing the frontier, at the end of the second emigration, I could not avoid thinking of the circumstances of my return after the first, and what a difference of sentiment distinguished them! ”

“ On examining this Rule, it may be proper to observe that, in consequence of the expence attendant upon a long voyage, few among the labouring classes have the means of emigrating to our colonies,—and hence we perceive the cause of that scarcity of useful hands which must constitute such a bar to the cultivation of newly occupied districts, and presents an almost insurmountable obstacle to the acquisition of comfort, and the rapid improvement of the settler's estate. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The destination, or intended future residence, of immigrants is influenced by certain considerations, such as the place of residence of friends or relatives, the port arrived at, and the funds at the disposal of the immigrants. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some thought emigration the best means, for if they started afresh in a new colony, they said they would leave behind them their bad characters, which closed every avenue to employment against them at home. ”

“ Those who then left the country were generally the idle dependants on overburdened families, or men who had no property; and therefore carried away only themselves. In the present eagerness of emigration, families, and almost communities, go away together. ”

“ To any one in the habit of visiting among the poor, emigration is a subject which must often present itself. When we are going through the crowded lane and dirty alley, broad fields and an open country suggest themselves by the mere force of contrast. ”

“ But when to these afflictions of the heart are added the pangs of physical suffering and privation; when emigrants, in embarking, embark their all in the expenses of the voyage, and have no hope, even for existence, but in a happy combination of possible chances; when near and dear ones must be left behind, certainly to suffer, and probably to die,—the [267] pangs of separation embrace all that can be conceived of agony and distress.
The emigrant ship whose arrival we witnessed had been seventy odd days from port to port. ”

“ The true test of fitness in this case is the possession, on the part of each individual133 concerned, of the will and ability to emigrate; and the probability of helpless multitudes being sent forth, who, both for their own sakes and for that of the colony, ought to have remained at home, is increased in proportion as other motives and other interests besides those of the emigrant himself influence his act of expatriation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And, whatever may have been the true state of matters in 1840—1843, with regard to the problems of population, production, and emigration, how, taking a candid review of all the facts and prospects, can it be possible at this epoch to provide for the fresh mouths we know must be fed in the years to come, otherwise than by reducing the numbers of the people under some 'comprehensive scheme of emigration'? ”

“ In addition to the true emigration, where there is a permanent change of residence, there is a large amount of temporary or periodic 139migration, in which case the individual leaves his home only for a short space of time, with the fixed intention of returning. ”

“ She was on her way to the great western world, and on her deck stood many pale-faced emigrants, whom the mild pleasant day had brought up from their close dark berths, and who cast mournful looks in the direction of the land they had left a thousand miles behind them. ”

“ To live over here in any of these Western countries would seem to denote that one may change one’s dwelling place as easily as one changes one’s clothes. The further east you go, the more reluctant one is, I think, to leave the shadow of one’s own trees. The man who leaves my country leaves it to go into exile. ”

“ The political and social results of emigration, though not susceptible of precise treatment, yet reinforce the conclusion I have drawn from a consideration of economical conditions. Older and long settled countries have, in the course of time, less reason to regret parting with various classes of their inhabitants. ”

“ Do not take immigration at its worst, but rather at its best, or at least above the average conditions. Assume that you belong to the more intelligent and desirable class, finding a legitimate reason for leaving your home in Europe, because of hard conditions and poor outlook there and bright visions of fortune in the land of liberty, whither relatives have preceded you. Your steamship ticket is bought in your native town, and you have no care concerning fare or baggage. A number of people of your race and neighborhood are on the way, so that you are not alone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The principle of emigration may be briefly stated. An individual and his family find that a new country affords a more prosperous field for their industry than their own, and accordingly they choose to sever the ties of home and kindred, and to become exiles for the sake of bettering their condition. ”

“ Of Emigration.—“A country may be so circumstanced, as to require that a portion of its population should migrate from one part of it to another, either permanently or occasionally; and may still, on the whole, have no actual excess of population. ”

“ Emigration, however necessary as the obvious means of providing for the increasing population of early-settled and over-peopled countries, is indeed a very serious matter to the individual emigrant and his family. ”

“ Hence the stream of migration sets from us to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would migrate in a body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods their poor hovels and their families. ”

“ All these forms of forced migration are evidently different in principle and in most of their characteristics from the great types of migration which have been mentioned. Their study is a subject by itself. ”

“ But, however admirably gifted by nature any situation may be deemed for the purpose of forming a new settlement, many weighty considerations must press upon the mind, and much privation will be endured, before any individual will determine to quit his native land, in search of ease or affluence in a distant uninhabited world. ”

“ There are certain general causes which are found to underlie all migratory movements, and which are worthy of examination. In 4the first place we find that the cause of a migratory movement must be a powerful one. Man inevitably becomes attached to the locality in which he finds himself placed. Bonds of many kinds arise to tie him to his home. Among these may be mentioned family connections, sentimental associations, familiar customs and habits of the community, political and religious attachments, business interests, property owned, superstitious veneration for graves. ”

“ The reasons for emigration must ever be strong, for the Bohemians cling to the inherited strip of land, to the cottage they were born in, to the little church on the hill, and the rattling mill on the brook. ”

“ The laboring man and the artisan fitted to perform a specific task are compelled, under the conditions created by city life, to move from one region to another in search of the particular kind of employment which they are fitted to perform. The tide of immigration which moves back and forth between Europe and America is to some extent a measure of this same mobility. ”

“ Perhaps in rational philosophy none could be better chosen than this scheme of migration, which would draw us from the immediate scene of our woe, and, leading us through pleasant and picturesque countries, amuse for a time our despair. ”