Part 11 (1/2)

Pa.s.sports and letters from prominent Chinese officials were of no avail with this prejudiced crowd which grew constantly more excited and revengeful.

Suddenly through the threatening ma.s.s a man forced his way to the side of Dr. P.----, exclaiming in English, ”You Melican man?” ”Yes,”

came the reply. Turning to the crowd he explained the friendliness of American foreigners, and turning to Dr. P. again said, ”Me Melican man, too, I live San Francisco seven years.” Then he said, ”You Jesus man? Me Jesus man, too; Mission, San Francisco, made me Jesus man.”

Turning again to the crowd he succeeded in persuading them, though protesting and reluctant, to allow Dr. P. to proceed on his way unharmed.

This incident stands for the myriad influences in the ebb and flow of immigration that carry the impulses, the ideals, and the new life of America into the heart of the old world civilizations.

To the great inert ma.s.ses of people in these lands have thus been brought the germs of free thought and action and the sustaining, impelling faith that these might sometime be attained by them and their children. That to them through unceasing struggle might also come the better day when government would stand for freedom, opportunity and progress, rather than the sword, prison, banishment and oppression.

America has been the great inspirer of the world.

Since the dawn of the twentieth century more than 10,500,000 immigrants have entered the United States. Through the pressure of economic conditions a large proportion of immigrants and their children are forced into the centers of poverty, crime and disease, the slum districts of our great cities, and into huge colonies in industrial centers where they both receive and contribute to conditions that have become pathological for the community, real sources of infection, both mental and physical. It is therefore not surprising to find that the children of immigrants reared in American cities contribute twice as many criminals as the sons of native whites of native stock. Our great industrial centers show an enormous aggregation of foreigners. It is said that these contain seven millions of the Slavs, the Latins, and the Asiatics, and those whose racial background makes difficult the conception of a democracy and their a.s.similation into it.

We confront a condition of grave peril to industrial interests as well as to our national well-being when, in addition to the overcoming of racial background, we must add the r.e.t.a.r.ding effect of the segregation of large foreign colonies in mining and industrial centers. Great numbers of these aliens do not expect to become American citizens, but are here only to acc.u.mulate sufficient capital to return. ”Of all the immigrants now comingone-third return to Europe and two-thirds of all those who return remain there.” These const.i.tute largely a mobile migratory and disturbing, unskilled wage-earning cla.s.s.

They therefore are unfavorable to a.s.similative influences and tend to establish in modified forms the standards and customs of the communities from which they have come. ”The town of Windber, in Western Pennsylvania, has a population of 8000 persons and is the center of twelve mining camps. It was founded by the opening of bituminous coal mines, for which purpose 1600 experienced Englishmen and 400 native Americans were brought into the locality. At the present, eighteen races of recent immigration are numbered among its mine workers. The Southern and Eastern Europeans among them have their churches, banks, steams.h.i.+p agencies and business establishments in the town to which they go to transact their affairs and to seek amus.e.m.e.nt.”

”Another ill.u.s.tration is the recently established iron and steel manufacturing community at Granite City and Madison, Illinois, which has the distinction of being the largest Bulgarian colony in the United States. These two cities join each other and for practical purposes are one. Fifteen years ago its site was an unbroken stretch of corn fields.

The original wage-earners were English, Irish, Germans, Welsh and Poles; then followed Slovaks, Magyars, a few Croatians. Mixed groups came next, Roumanians, Greeks and Servians, and later Bulgarians, until that group alone numbered 8000; later still, the foreigners were augmented by the arrival of 4000 new immigrants--Armenians, Servians, Lithuanians, Slovaks, Magyars and Poles. Under normal industrial conditions the population of the community is estimated at 20,000 Here the various racial groups live entirely apart from any American influence.”

The New York Tribune states: ”It is a somewhat startling announcement that more than one-third of the adult male inhabitants of New York City are unnaturalized aliens. There are, according to the census, 1,433,749 males in the city, of twenty-one years or more, and of these more than 500,000 have not become naturalized. In the whole state there are 718,940 foreign-born white men of voting age who have not become citizens. It needs no argument to prove that this is not a desirable state of affairs, and that if perpetuated it would be mischievous, if not disastrous.”

From the figures collected in an investigation of four months in New York City Night Court, it appears that 7.7 per cent of the women arrested and convicted for keeping disorderly houses and solicitation were foreign-born.

In New York City all the conditions created by immigration are enormously accentuated, for within itself and its suburbs it has a foreign population exceeding the whole population of Chicago.

”It is at once the largest Catholic city of history and the largest Jewish city of history.”

Statistics furnished by the industrial department of the Y.M.C.A., based upon the census of 1910, give the proportion of two out of every three of the inhabitants of the following cities as foreign-born or of foreign-born parentage.

181,511 Columbus 104,402 Spokane 233,650 Indianapolis 213,381 Denver 116,577 Dayton 207,214 Portland 248,381 Kansas City 558,485 Baltimore 319,198 Los Angeles 168,497 Toledo 237,194 Seattle 423,715 Buffalo 100,253 Albany 267,799 Jersey City, N.J.

124,096 Omaha 347,469 Newark, N.J.

137,249 Syracuse 224,326 Providence 687,029 St. Louis 102,054 Bridgeport 1,549,008 Philadelphia 465,766 Detroit 150,174 Oakland 104,839 Cambridge 112,571 Grand Rapids 560,603 Cleveland 218,149 Rochester 670,585 Boston 533,905 Pittsburgh 125,600 Paterson, N.J.

301,408 Minneapolis 373,857 Milwaukee 129,867 Scranton 2,185,283 Chicago 214,744 St. Paul 106,294 Lowell 145,986 Worcester 4,766,883 New York 133,605 New Haven 119,295 Fall River

This tabulation suggests all that these dominant cities represent of congestion of industrial and social pressure, and their powerful effects upon new Americans in their most impressionable period.

”The significant feature of the situation of which the foregoing ill.u.s.trations are typical,” say such authorities as Prof. Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lanck, ”is the almost complete ignorance and indifference of the native American population to the recent immigrant colonies and their condition. This att.i.tude extends even to the native churches. Comparatively few agencies have been established for the Americanization and a.s.similation of Southern and Eastern European wage-earners.

”Not only is a great field open for social and religious work, but vast possibilities are offered for patriotic service in improving these serious conditions which confront a self-governing republic.”

That the crowding, struggling foreigner of many races and tongues may take his place as a voting American, in whose hands rests a predominating influence upon the present and future of this nation, it is essential that he catch the vision of those fundamental, inspiring ideals which have made America the hope of the hopeless, the very land of promise, to the oppressed of the world.