Part 16 (1/2)

Personal degeneracy tends to perpetuate itself in the family. Drunken, depraved, or feeble-minded parents usually produce children with the same inheritances or tendencies; family quarrelling and an utter absence of moral training do not foster the development of character.

A slum environment in the city strengthens the evil tendencies of such a home, as it counterbalances the good effects of a wholesome home environment. Mental and moral degeneracy is always present in society, and if unchecked spreads widely; physical degeneracy is so common as to be alarming, resulting in dangerous forms of disease, imbecility, and insanity. Society is waking to the need of protecting itself against degeneracy in all its forms, and of cutting out the roots of the evil from the social body.

READING REFERENCES

NEARING: _Social Religion_, pages 104-157.

COMMONS: ”Is Cla.s.s Conflict in America Growing?” art. in _American Journal of Sociology_, 13: 756-783.

HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 276-283.

NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 185-193.

WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 59-117, 276-292.

PATTEN: _Social Basis of Religion_, pages 107-133.

BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 499-512.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE IMMIGRANT

228. =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.

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 const.i.tute the migrating ma.s.s have been changed most of all. And the end is not yet.

The immigrant const.i.tutes 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.

It is a problem that affects the welfare of races and continents outside of America, as well as here, and that affects millions yet unborn, and millions more who might have been born were it not for the unfavorable changes that have taken place because of the s.h.i.+ft in population. It is a problem that has to do with all phases of group life--its economic, educational, political, moral, and religious interests. It is a problem that demands the united wisdom of all who care for the welfare of humanity in the days to come. The heart of the problem is first whether the immigrant shall be permitted to crowd into this country unhindered, or whether sterner barriers shall be placed in the way of the increasing mult.i.tude; secondly, if restrictions are decided upon what shall be their nature, and whose interests shall be considered first--those of the immigrant, of the countries involved, or of world progress as a whole?

The problem can be approached best by considering (1) the history of immigration, (2) the present facts about immigration, (3) the tendencies and effects of immigration. Migrations have occurred everywhere in history, and they are progressing in these days in other countries besides the United States. Canada is adding thousands every year, parts of South America are already German or Italian because of immigration, in lesser numbers emigrants are going to the colonies that the European nations, especially the English, have located all over the world. European immigration to North America has been so prolonged and abundant that it const.i.tutes the particular phenomenon that most deserves attention. Other nations have fought wars to secure additional territory for their people; the immigrant occupation of America has been a peaceful conquest.

229. =The Irish.=--Although the early occupation of this continent was by immigration from Europe, after the Revolution the increase of population was almost entirely by natural growth. Large families were the rule and a hardy people was rapidly gaining the mastery of the eastern part of the continent. It was not until 1820 that the new immigration became noticeable and the government took legislative action to regulate it (1819). Between 1840 and 1880 three distinct waves of immigration broke on American sh.o.r.es. The first was Irish.

The Irish peasants were starving from a potato famine that extended over several years in the forties, and they poured by the thousand into America, the women becoming domestic servants and the men the unskilled laborers that were needed in the construction camps. They built roads, dug ca.n.a.ls, and laid the first railways. Complaint was made that they lowered the standards of wages and of living, that their intemperate, improvident ways tended to complicate the problem of poverty, and that their Catholic religion made them dangerous, but they continued to come until the movement reached its climax, in 1851, when 272,000 pa.s.sed through the gates of the Atlantic ports. The Irish-American has become an important element of the population, especially in the Eastern cities, and has shown special apt.i.tude for politics and business.

230. =Germans and Scandinavians.=--The Irishman was followed by the German. He was attracted by-the rich agricultural lands of the Middle West and the opportunities for education and trade in the towns and cities. German political agitators who had failed to propagate democracy in the revolutionary days of 1848 made their way to a place where they could mould the German-American ideas. While the Irish settled down in the seaboard towns, the Germans went West, and const.i.tuted one of the solid groups that was to build the future cosmopolitan nation. The German was followed by the Scandinavian. The people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were increasing in number, but their rough, cold country could not support them all. As the Nors.e.m.e.n took to the sea in the ninth century, so the Scandinavian did in the nineteenth, but this time in a peaceful migration toward the setting sun. They began coming soon after the Civil War, and by 1882 they numbered thirteen per cent of the total immigration. They were a specially valuable a.s.set, for they were industrious agriculturists and occupied the valuable but unused acres of the Northwest, where they planted the wheat belt of the United States, learned American ways and founded American inst.i.tutions, and have become one of the best strains in the American blood.

231. =The New Immigrants.=--If the United States could have continued to receive mainly such people as these from northern Europe, there would be little cause to complain of the volume of immigration, but since 1880 the tide has been setting in from southern and eastern Europe and even from Asia, bringing in large numbers of persons who are not of allied stock, have been little educated, and do not understand or fully sympathize with American principles and ideals, and for the most part are unskilled workmen. These have come in such enormous numbers as to const.i.tute a real menace and to compel attention.

TABLE OF IMMIGRATION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1914

(Races numbering less than 10,000 each are not included)

+--------------------------------------------------------+ | South Italians 251,612 | | Jews 138,051 | | Poles 122,657 | | Germans 79,871 | | English 51,746 | | Greeks 45,881 | | Russians 44,957 | | North Italians 44,802 | | Hungarians 44,538 | | Croatians and Slovenians 37,284 | | Ruthenians 36,727 | | Scandinavians 36,053 | | Irish 33,898 | | Slovaks 25,819 | | Roumanians 24,070 | | Lithuanians 21,584 | | Scotch 18,997 | | French 18,166 | | Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins 15,084 | | Mexicans 13,089 | | Finns 12,805 | | Dutch and Flemings 12,566 | | Spanish 11,064 | +--------------------------------------------------------+

232. =Italians and Slavs.=--Most numerous of these are the Italians.

At home they feel the pressure of population, the pinch of small income, and heavy taxation. Here it costs less to be a citizen and there are more opportunities for a livelihood. Gangs of Italian laborers have taken the place of the Irish. Italians have established themselves in the small trades, and some of them find a place in the factory. Two-thirds of them are from the country, and they find opportunity to use their agricultural knowledge as farm laborers. In California and Louisiana they have established settlements of their own, and in the East they make a foreign fringe on the outskirts of suburban towns. North Italy is more progressive than the south and the qualities of the people are of higher grade, but the bulk of emigration is from the region of Naples and Sicily. Among the southern Italians the percentage of illiteracy is high, they have the reputation of being slippery in business relations, and not a few anarchists and criminals are found among them. It is not reasonable to expect that these people will measure up to the level of the steady, reliable, and hard-working American or north European, especially as large numbers of them are birds of pa.s.sage spending the winter in Italy or going home for a time when business in America is depressed.

Yet the great majority of those who settle here are peaceable, ambitious, and hard-working men and women.