Races and Immigrants in America

Chinese Students, Honolulu
(From The Independent)

Another class of measures running partly along race lines are sumptuary laws, especially those regulating saloons and Sunday observance. In the Southern states saloon prohibition is largely a race discrimination and a race protection. In the North it often is American puritanism of the country against European liberalism of the cities. Here the referendum shows itself as the conciliator of nationalities. Upon no other issue has the popular vote been so generally resorted to. This issue comes close to the habits and passions of the masses. It takes precedence of all others except religion, but cannot be evaded like religion. If legislative bodies and executive officials decide the question, then the German or the Irishman adds to his zeal for the election of a conationalist his thirst for the election of a candidate with habits like his own. But when left to a popular vote, the saloon question is separated from the choice of candidates, and other issues come forward. A majority vote, too, pacifies the minority of all races, where the act of a legislative body leaves the suspicion of unfair advantage taken by unrepresentative politicians. By the exigencies of the situation the referendum has been invoked to take both the saloon problem and its share of the race problem “out of politics.” The lesson is applicable wherever race or nationality conflicts with democracy. With questions of religious belief eliminated by the constitution, and questions of personal habits eliminated by the referendum, other questions of race antagonism will be eliminated by the initiative and the referendum.[107]

Suffrage.—The climax of liberality in donating the suffrage to all races and conditions was reached with the fifteenth amendment in 1869. At that time not only had the negro been enfranchised; but nearly a score of Western and Southern states and territories had enfranchised the alien. So liberal were these states in welcoming the immigrant that they allowed him to vote as soon as he declared his intention to take out naturalization papers. This declaration, under the federal law, is made at least two years before the papers are granted, and it may be made as soon as the immigrant has landed. Thus in some of those states he could vote as soon as he acquired a legal residence, that is, four or four and one-half years before he acquired citizenship. Several of these states have recently changed these laws, but there remain nine that continue to accept the alien as a voter.

In the Eastern states such generosity was not granted by law but was practised by fraud. Naturalization papers are issued by federal courts and by state courts of record. The law gives the judge much discretion, for he is required to refuse the certificate if he is not satisfied that the alien is of good moral character, attached to the Constitution, and well disposed. But so careless or crowded are the judges that seldom have they examined the applicants. Indeed the political managers have had the option of judges and could take their immigrants to the court that would shut its eyes. Many thousands of fraudulent papers have been secured in this way, beginning at the very time when the naturalization law was enacted in 1802, but increasing enormously during the past forty years.[108]

Finally, in 1906, Congress enacted a law giving to the Bureau of Immigration control over naturalization. The object is to bring all of the courts under a uniform practice, to provide complete records and means of identification, to establish publicity, to enable the government to appear in court and resist fraudulent naturalization, and to impose severe penalties.[109] The law also adds something to the qualifications required of the alien. He must not be an anarchist or a polygamist, nor a believer of such doctrines; he must be able to speak the English language, and must intend to reside permanently in the United States.[110] The language restriction affects but few, since in 1900 only 3.3 per cent of the naturalized foreign-born males of voting age could not speak English.[111] The intention of permanent residence, as well as the entire measure, is designed to remove the abuse of foreigners’ acquiring citizenship in order to return to their native land and defy their rightful government. On the administrative side this law is of great significance. It marks a serious beginning on the part of the federal government of protecting the citizenship that a generation before it had so liberally bestowed.

There are certain races which by law are prohibited from naturalization. For nearly seventy years the law on the subject enacted in 1802 admitted to citizenship only free white persons. This was amended in 1870 to admit “aliens of African nationality and persons of African descent.” But other colored races were not admitted, so that the Chinese, Japanese, or Malay immigrant has never been eligible to citizenship. His children, however, born in this country are citizens, and cannot be excluded from voting on account of race or color. Indians living in tribes are foreigners, but if they recognize allegiance by paying taxes or dividing up their land in severalty they are citizens and voters.

Of the immigrant races eligible to citizenship their importance as possible voters is greater than their importance in the population. This is because men and boys come in greater numbers than women and children. Ten million foreign-born population furnishes 5,000,000 males of voting age, but 66,000,000 native population furnishes only 16,000,000 males of voting age. In other words, one-half of the foreign-born, and only one-fourth of the native-born, are potential voters. But not all of the potential voters are actual voters. With a grand total in the year 1900 of 21,000,000 of the proper sex and age, only 15,000,000 went to the polls. The ratio is five out of seven. Two million negroes were excluded, and 1,400,000 foreign-born had not yet naturalized. This leaves 2,600,000 natives and foreign-born who might have voted but did not. The foreigner who takes out his citizenship papers does it mainly to vote. Two-thirds of them had done so or declared their intention in 1900.[112] Probably the proportion of native whites who did not vote was 15 per cent of their total number, and the proportion of foreign-born who did not, or could not, was over 40 per cent.

But this proportion differs greatly among the several races. It is not so much a difference in willingness as a difference in opportunity. Five years are required for naturalization, and while 40 per cent of those who have been here six to nine years have not declared their intention nor taken out their papers, only 7 per cent of those who have been here twenty years retain their allegiance to foreign governments.[113] This increases relatively the political weight of the Teutonic and Celtic races which are oldest in point of immigration, and reduces relatively the weight of the Italian, Slav, and Jewish races. The figures below make this quite plain. The table shows the proportion of foreign-born who remain aliens, in the sense that they have neither taken out citizenship papers nor declared their intention of doing so. Only 7 to 13 per cent of the foreigners from Northwestern Europe are aliens, compared with 35 to 60 per cent of those from Eastern and Southern Europe. In course of time these differences will diminish, and the Italian and Slav will approach the Irishman and German in their share of American suffrage:—

Per cent of Aliens among Foreign-born Males of Voting Age[114]

The right to vote is not “inalienable,” neither is the right to life or liberty. Governments give them, refuse them, and take them away. In America this means the state governments. The federal government only declares that the states must follow the “due process of law,” and not discriminate on account of race, religion, or servitude. In allowing the right to vote they may and do discriminate on other grounds, such as morals, illiteracy, intelligence, property, and sex. This may result in race or immigrant discrimination, and does so in the case of illiteracy and intelligence. After the Irish immigration of the forties, Connecticut in 1855 and Massachusetts in 1857 refused thenceforth to enfranchise those who could not read the Constitution. Since 1889 six other Northern and Western states—Wyoming, Maine, California, Washington, Delaware, and New Hampshire, in the order named—have erected barriers against those who cannot read or write the English language or the Constitution.[115] Six Southern states have done the same, but one of them, Mississippi, has added another permanent barrier,—intelligence. This is supposed to be measured by ability to “understand” the Constitution as read by a white man. Southern states have also added vagrancy, poll tax, and property clauses even more exclusive than reading and writing.[116] The federal courts have refused to interfere because these restrictions in their legal form bear alike on white and black. If in practice they bear unequally, that is a matter for the state courts.[117]

To take away the suffrage from many of those who enjoy it is peacefully impossible under our system. But voters who hold fast to the privilege for themselves may be induced to deny it to the next generation. It was in this way usually that the foregoing restrictions were introduced. Massachusetts set the example by retaining all who could vote when the test was adopted, and making the exclusion apply only to those who came after. The Southern states did the same by “grandfather” and “understanding” clauses. By either method, in course of time, the favored voters disappear by death or removal, and the restrictions apply in full to the succeeding generation.[118]

The effect of the educational test on the suffrage of the foreign-born is not as great as might be supposed. Naturalization itself is almost an educational test. Only 6.3 per cent of the naturalized foreigners are illiterate, but 28 per cent of those who remain aliens are unable to read. In Boston only 2 per cent are excluded from voting through inability to read English, although the corresponding aliens are 22 per cent. Probably the educational qualification in Massachusetts affects these proportions by lessening the inducement to naturalize, but in Chicago and New York, where that qualification is not required, scarcely more than 5 per cent of those who get naturalized would be unable to vote under such a law, compared with less than 1 per cent of the native voters.[119] In the country at large the disproportion is not so great. Five and eight-tenths per cent of the sons of native parents would be excluded by an educational test against 6.3 per cent of the naturalized foreigners, and only 2 per cent of the native sons of foreigners. In the several Southern states the test, if equally applied, will exclude 6 to 20 per cent of the white voters and 35 to 60 per cent of the colored voters.[120] In a Southern city like Memphis it would exclude 1 per cent of the white and 38 per cent of the colored.

Tested by the standards of democracy, the ability to read and write the English language is a proper qualification. It is perhaps the maximum that can be required, for to test the ability to understand what is read and written is to open the door to partisanship and race discrimination. Yet it is intelligence that makes the suffrage an instrument of protection, and it is not a denial of rights to refuse such an instrument to one who injures himself with it. The literacy qualification is one that can be acquired by effort. Other tests, especially the property qualification, are an assertion of inequality. Yet it is not strange that with the corrupt and inefficient governments that have accompanied universal suffrage there should have occurred a reaction. This has not always expressed itself in the policy of restricting the suffrage, for that can with difficulty be accomplished. It has shown itself rather in withdrawing government as far as possible from the control of the voters. The so-called “business theory” which has so generally been applied to the reform of city governments has converted the city as far as possible to the model of a private corporation, with its general manager, the mayor. The city has been denied its proper functions, and these have been turned over to private parties. But this reaction seems to have reached its limit. It is now understood to have been simply the legal recognition of an incipient plutocracy establishing itself under the forms of democracy. The return movement has begun, and the rescue of democracy is sought, as stated above, in forms and functions of government still more democratic.

The way plutocracy looks when it has passed the incipient stage may be seen in Hawaii.[121] It is as though we had annexed those islands in order to watch in our own back yard the fruit of excessive immigration. A population of 154,000 furnishes 65,000 Hawaiians, Portuguese, and other Caucasians. The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans have 87,000 population and no votes. The American contingent is some 17,000 souls and 3000 votes. The latter represent four classes or interests: the capitalist planters owning two-thirds of the property; superintendents, engineers, and foremen managing the plantation labor; skilled mechanics; small employers, merchants, and farmers. In order to get plantation labor and to keep the supply too large and diversified for concerted wage demands the planters imported contract Chinese in place of Hawaiians, then Japanese, then Koreans. As each race rises in standards and independence it leaves the plantations to enter trades, manufactures, and merchandising. It drives out the wage-earners from the less skilled occupations, then from the more skilled, then the small manufacturers, contractors, and merchants. The American middle classes disappear, partly by emigration to California, partly by abandoning business and relying on the values of real estate which rise through the competition of low standards of wages and profits, and partly by attaching themselves to the best-paid positions offered by the planters. In proportion as they move up in the scale through the entrance of immigrants in the lower positions, they transfer their allegiance from democracy to plutocracy. The planters themselves are caught in a circle. The rising values of their land absorb the high tariff on sugar and prevent rising wages if the values are to be kept up. The Japanese, with contract labor abolished, have shown a disposition to strike for higher wages. This has led to advances at the expense of profits, and the resulting “scarcity of labor” compels the planters again to ask for contract Chinese coolies. Immigration is thus only a makeshift remedy for the exactions of unions and the undevelopment of resources. More immigration requires perpetually more and still more, till the resulting plutocracy seeks to save itself by servile labor. A moderate amount of immigrant labor, assimilated and absorbed into the body politic, stimulates industry and progress, but an excessive and indigestible amount leads to the search for coercive remedies and ends in the stagnation of industry. The protective tariff was supposed to build up free American labor, but in Hawaii, with unrestricted immigration, it has handed us American plutocracy.

CHAPTER IX

A German statistician,[122] after studying population statistics of the United States and observing the “race suicide” of the native American stock, concludes: “The question of restriction on immigration is not a matter of higher or lower wages, nor a matter of more or less criminals and idiots, but the exclusion of a large part of the immigrants might cost the United States their place among the world powers.”

Exactly the opposite opinion was expressed in 1891 by Francis A. Walker,[123] the leading American statistician of his time, and superintendent of the censuses of 1870 and 1880. He said: “Foreign immigration into this country has, from the time it first assumed large proportions, amounted not to a reinforcement of our population, but a replacement of native by foreign stock.... The American shrank from the industrial competition thus thrust upon him. He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of day labor with these new elements of population; he was even more unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that competition.... The more rapidly foreigners came into the United States, the smaller was the rate of increase, not merely among the native population separately, but throughout the population of the country as a whole,” including the descendants of the earlier foreign immigrants.

Walker’s statements of fact, whatever we may say of his explanations, are easily substantiated. From earliest colonial times until the census of 1840 the people of the United States multiplied more rapidly than the people of any other modern nation, not excepting the prolific French Canadians. The first six censuses, beginning in 1790, show that, without appreciable immigration, the population doubled every twenty years, and had this rate of increase continued until the present time, the descendants of the colonial white and negro stock in the year 1900 would have numbered 100,000,000 instead of the combined colonial, immigrant, and negro total of 76,000,000. Indeed, if we take the total immigration from 1820 to 1900, exceeding 19,000,000 people, and apply a slightly higher than the average rate of increase from births, we shall find that in the year 1900 one-half of the white population is derived from immigrant stock, leaving the other half, or but 33,000,000 whites, derived from the colonial stock.[124] This is scarcely more than one-third of the number that should have been expected had the colonial element continued to multiply from 1840 to 1900 as it had multiplied from 1790 to 1840.

An interesting corroboration of these speculations is the prediction made in the year 1815, thirty years before the great migration of the nineteenth century, by the mathematician and publicist, Elkanah Watson.[125] On the basis of the increase shown in the first three censuses he made computations of the probable population for each census year to 1900, and I have drawn up the following table, showing the actual population compared with his estimates. Superintendent Walker, in the essay above quoted, uses Watson’s figures, and points out the remarkable fact that those predictions were within less than one per cent of the actual population until the year 1860, although, meanwhile, there had come nearly 5,000,000 immigrants whom Watson could not have foreseen. Thus the population of 1860, notwithstanding access of the millions of immigrants, was only 310,000, or one per cent less than Watson had predicted. And the falling off since 1860 has been even greater, for, notwithstanding the immigration of 20,000,000 persons since 1820, the population in 1900 was 75,000,000, or 25 per cent less than Watson’s computations.

POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION

This question of the “race suicide” of the American or colonial stock should be regarded as the most fundamental of our social problems, or rather as the most fundamental consequence of our social and industrial institutions. It may be met by exhortation, as when President Roosevelt says, “If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future.”[126]

The anxiety of President Roosevelt is well grounded; but if race suicide is not in itself an original cause, but is the result of other causes, then exhortation will accomplish but little, while the removal or amelioration of the other causes will of itself correct the resulting evil. Where, then, shall we look for the causes of race suicide, or, more accurately speaking, for the reduced proportion of children brought into the world? The immediate circumstances consist in postponing the age of marriage, in limiting the number of births after marriage, and in an increase in the proportion of unmarried people. The reasons are almost solely moral and not physical. Those who are ambitious and studious, who strive to reach a better position in the world for themselves and their children, and who have not inherited wealth, will generally postpone marriage until they have educated themselves, or accumulated property, or secured a permanent position. They will then not bring into the world a larger number of children than they can provide for on the basis of the standing which they themselves have attained; for observation shows that those who marry early have large families, and are generally kept on a lower station in life. The real problem, therefore, with this class of people, is the opportunities for earning a living. In the earlier days, when the young couple could take up vacant land, and farming was the goal of all, a large family and the coöperation of wife and children were a help rather than a hindrance. To-day the couple, unless the husband has a superior position, must go together to the factory or mill, and the children are a burden until they reach the wage-earning age. Furthermore, wage-earning is uncertain, factories shut down, and the man with a large family is thrown upon his friends or charity. To admonish people living under these conditions to go forth and multiply is to advise the cure of race suicide by race deterioration.

Faculty of Tuskegee Institute
(From World’s Work)

Curiously enough, these observations apply with even greater force to the second generation of immigrants than to the native stock, for among the daughters of the foreign-born only 19 per cent of those aged 15 to 24 years are married, while among daughters of native parents 30 per cent are married; and for the men of 20 to 29 only 26.8 per cent of the native sons of foreigners are married and 38.5 per cent of the sons of natives.[127] These figures sustain what can be observed in many large cities, that the races of immigrants who came to this country twenty-five or more years ago are shrinking from competition with the new races from Southern Europe.

Boston, for example, with its large Irish immigration beginning two generations ago, shows a similar disproportion. Of the American daughters of foreign parents 15 to 24 years of age, only 12 per cent are married, but of the daughters of native parents 17 per cent are married; of the sons of foreign parents 20 to 29 years of age, only 20 per cent are married, but of the sons of native parents 26 per cent are married. The contrast with the immigrants themselves is striking. In Boston, 24 per cent of the foreign-born women aged 15 to 24 are married, and 35 per cent of the foreign-born men aged 20 to 29.[128] In other words, the early marriages of immigrant men and women are nearly twice as many as those of the American-born sons and daughters of immigrants, and only one-third more than those of the sons and daughters of native stock. With such a showing as this it would seem that our “place among the world powers” depends indeed on immigration, for the immigrants’ children are more constrained to race suicide than the older American stock.[129]

The competition is not so severe in country districts where the native stock prevails; but in the cities and industrial centres the skilled and ambitious workman and workwoman discover that in order to keep themselves above the low standards of the immigrants they must postpone marriage. The effect is noticeable and disastrous in the case of the Irish-Americans. Displaced by Italians and Slavs, many of the young men have fallen into the hoodlum and criminal element. Here moral causes produce physical causes of race destruction, for the vicious elements of the population disappear through the diseases bequeathed to their progeny, and are recruited only from the classes forced down from above. On the other hand, many more Irish have risen to positions of foremanship, or have lived on their wits in politics, or have entered the priesthood. The Irish-American girls, showing independence and ambition, have refused to marry until they could be assured of a husband of steady habits, and they have entered clerical positions, factories, and mills. Thus this versatile race, with distinct native ability, is meeting in our cities the same displacement and is resorting to the same race suicide which itself inflicted a generation or two earlier on the native colonial stock. But the effect is more severe, for the native stock was able to leave the scenes of competition, to go West and take up farms or build cities, but the Irish-American has less opportunity to make such an escape.

Great numbers of Irishmen, together with others of English, Scotch, German, and American descent, remaining in these industrial centres, have sought to protect themselves and maintain high standards through labor-unions and the so-called “closed shop,” by limiting the number of apprentices, excluding immigrants, and giving their sons a preference of admission. But even with the unions they find it necessary also to limit the size of their families, and I am convinced from personal observation, that, were the statistics on this point compiled from the unions of skilled workmen, there would be found even stronger evidences of race suicide than among other classes in the nation.

To the well-to-do classes freedom from the care of children is not a necessity, but an opportunity for luxury and indulgence. These include the very wealthy, whose round of social functions would be interrupted by home obligations. To them, of course, immigration brings no need of prudence—it rather helps to bring the enormous fortunes which distract their attention from the home. But their numbers are insignificant compared with the millions who determine the fate of the nation. More significant are the well-to-do farmers and their wives who have inherited the soil redeemed by their fathers, and whose desire to be free for enjoying the fruits of civilization lead them to the position so strongly condemned by President Roosevelt. This class of farmers, as shown in the census map of the size of private families,[130] may be traced across the Eastern and Northern states, running through New England, rural New York, Northern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, parts of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. In the rich counties of southern Michigan, settled and occupied mainly by native stock from New York, the average size of families is less than four persons, as it is in a large area of Central New York, whereas for the country at large it is 4.7, and for counties in the mining sections of Michigan occupied by immigrants it rises as high as 5.8 persons.

The census figures showing the size of families do not, however, reveal the number of children born to a family, since they show only those living together and not those who have moved away or died. This especially affects the large-sized families, and does not reveal, for example, a fact shown by Kuczynski from the state census of Massachusetts that the average number of children of the foreign-born women in that state is 4.5, while for native women it is only 2.7.[131] This also affects the showing for a state like West Virginia, composed almost entirely of native Americans of colonial stock, with only 2 per cent foreign-born and 5 per cent colored, where the average size of families is 5.1 persons, the highest in the United States, but where in the Blue Ridge Mountains I have come upon two couples of native white Americans who claimed respectively eighteen and twenty-two children. Throughout the South the reduction in size of families and the postponement of marriage have not occurred to any great extent either among the white or colored races, and these are states to which immigration has contributed less than 3 per cent of their population. Yet, if Superintendent Walker’s view is sound in all respects, the Southern whites should shrink from competition with the negro in the same way that the Northern white shrinks from competition with the immigrant. He does not do so, and the reasons are probably found in the fact that the South has been remote from the struggle of modern competition, and that ignorance and proud contentment fail to spur the masses to that ambitious striving which rises by means of what Malthus called the prudential restraints on population. It is quite probable that in the South, with the spread of the factory system and universal education, the growth in numbers through excess of births over deaths will be retarded.

On the whole it seems that immigration and the competition of inferior races tends to dry up the older and superior races wherever the latter have learned to aspire to an improved standard of living, and that among well-to-do classes not competing with immigrants, but made wealthier by their low wages, a similar effect is caused by the desire for luxury and easy living.[132]

Americanization.—A line on the chart opposite page 63 shows the proportions between the number of immigrants and the existing population. From this it appears that the enormous immigration of 1906 is relatively not as large as the smaller immigration of the years 1849 to 1854, or the year 1882. Three hundred thousand immigrants in 1850 was as large an addition to a population of 23,000,000 as 1,000,000 in 1906 to a population of 85,000,000. Judged by mere numbers, the present immigration is not greater than that witnessed by two former periods. Judged by saturation it may be greater, for the former immigrants were absorbed by colonial Americans, but the present immigrants enter a solution half colonial and half immigrant. The problem of Americanization increases more than the number to be Americanized. What is the nature of this problem, and what are the forces available for its solution?

The term amalgamation may be used for that mixture of blood which unites races in a common stock, while assimilation is that union of their minds and wills which enables them to think and act together. Amalgamation is a process of centuries, but assimilation is a process of individual training. Amalgamation is a blending of races, assimilation a blending of civilizations. Amalgamation is beyond the organized efforts of government, but assimilation can be promoted by social institutions and laws. Amalgamation therefore cannot attract our practical interest, except as its presence or absence sets limits to our efforts toward assimilation.

Our principal interest in amalgamation is its effect on the negro race. The census statisticians discontinued after 1890 the inquiry into the number of mulattoes, but the census of 1890 showed that mulattoes were 15 per cent of the total negro population. This was a slightly larger proportion than that of preceding years. The mulatto element of the negro race is almost a race of itself. Its members on the average differ but little if at all from those of the white race in their capacity for advancement, and it is the tragedy of race antagonism that they with their longings should suffer the fate of the more contented and thoughtless blacks.[133] In their veins runs the blood of white aristocracy, and it is a curious psychology of the Anglo-Saxon that assigns to the inferior race those equally entitled to a place among the superior. But sociology offers compensation for the injustice to physiology. The mulatto is the natural leader, instructor, and spokesman of the black. Prevented from withdrawing himself above the fortunes of his fellows, he devotes himself to their elevation. This fact becomes clear in proportion as the need of practical education becomes clear. The effective work of the whites through missionary schools and colleges has not been the elevation of the black, but the elevation of mulattoes to teach the blacks. A new era for the blacks is beginning when the mulatto sees his own future in theirs.

Apart from the negro we have very little knowledge of the amalgamation of races in America. We only know that for the most part they have blended into a united people with harmonious ideals, and the English, the German, the Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, and the Huguenot have become the American.

We speak of superior and inferior races, and this is well enough, but care should be taken to distinguish between inferiority and backwardness—between that superiority which is the original endowment of race and that which results from the education and training which we call civilization. While there are superior and inferior races, there are primitive, mediæval, and modern civilizations, and there are certain mental qualities required for and produced by these different grades of civilization. A superior race may have a primitive or mediæval civilization, and therefore its individuals may never have exhibited the superior mental qualities with which they are actually endowed, and which a modern civilization would have called into action. The adults coming from such a civilization seem to be inferior in their mental qualities, but their children, placed in the new environments of the advanced civilization, exhibit at once the qualities of the latter. The Chinaman comes from a mediæval civilization—he shows little of those qualities which are the product of Western civilization, and with his imitativeness, routine, and traditions, he has earned the reputation of being entirely non-assimilable. But the children of Chinamen, born and reared in this country, entirely disprove this charge, for they are as apt in absorbing the spirit and method of American institutions as any Caucasian.[134] The race is superior but backward.

The Teutonic races until five hundred years after Christ were primitive in their civilization, yet they had the mental capacities which made them, like Arminius, able to comprehend and absorb the highest Roman civilization. They passed through the mediæval period and then came out into the modern period of advanced civilization, yet during these two thousand years their mental capacities, the original endowment of race, have scarcely improved. It is civilization, not race evolution, that has transformed the primitive warrior into the philosopher, scientist, artisan, and business man. Could their babies have been taken from the woods two thousand years ago and transported to the homes and schools of modern America, they could have covered in one generation the progress of twenty centuries. Other races, like the Scotch and the Irish, made the transition from primitive institutions to modern industrial habits within a single century, and Professor Brinton, our most profound student of the American Indian, has said,[135] “I have been in close relations to several full-blood American Indians who had been removed from an aboriginal environment and instructed in this manner [in American schools and communities], and I could not perceive that they were either in intellect or sympathies inferior to the usual type of the American gentleman. One of them notably had a refined sense of humor as well as uncommon acuteness of observation.”

The line between superior and inferior, as distinguished from advanced and backward, races appears to be the line between the temperate and tropical zones. The two belts of earth between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer and the arctic and antarctic circles have been the areas where man in his struggle for existence developed the qualities of mind and will—the ingenuity, self-reliance, self-control, strenuous exertion, and will power—which befit the modern industrial civilization. But in the tropics these qualities are less essential, for where nature lavishes food, and winks at the neglect of clothing and shelter, there ignorance, superstition, physical prowess, and sexual passion have an equal chance with intelligence, foresight, thrift, and self-control. The children of all the races of the temperate zones are eligible to the highest American civilization, and it only needs that they be “caught” young enough. There is perhaps no class of people more backward than the 3,000,000 poor whites of the Appalachian Mountains, but there is no class whose children are better equipped by heredity to attain distinction in any field of American endeavor. This much cannot be said for the children of the tropical zones. Amalgamation is their door to assimilation.

Before we can intelligently inquire into the agencies of Americanization we must first agree on what we mean by the term. I can think of no comprehensive and concise description equal to that of Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” This description should be applied not only to the state but to other institutions. In the home it means equality of husband and wife; in the church it means the voice of the laity; in industry the participation of the workmen.

Unhappily it cannot be said that Lincoln’s description has ever been attained. It is the goal which he and others whom we recognize as true Americans have pointed out. Greater than any other obstacle in the road toward that goal have been our race divisions. Government for the people depends on government by the people, and this is difficult where the people cannot think and act together. Such is the problem of Americanization.

In the earlier days the most powerful agency of assimilation was frontier life. The pioneers “were left almost entirely to their own resources in this great struggle. They developed a spirit of self-reliance, a capacity for self-government, which are the most prominent characteristics of the American people.”[136] Frontier life includes pioneer mining camps as well as pioneer farming.

Next to the frontier the farms of America are the richest field of assimilation. Here the process is sometimes thought to be slower than it is in the cities, but any one who has seen it under both conditions cannot doubt that if it is slower it is more real. In the cities the children are more regularly brought under the influence of the public schools, but more profound and lasting than the education of the schools is the education of the street and the community. The work of the schools in a great city like New York cannot be too highly praised, and without such work the future of the immigrant’s child would be dark. In fact the children of the immigrant are better provided with school facilities than the children of the Americans. Less than 1 per cent of their children 10 to 14 years of age are illiterate, but the proportion of illiterates among children of native parents is over 4 per cent. This is not because the foreigner is more eager to educate his child than is the native, but because nearly three-fourths of the foreigners’ children and only one-sixth of the natives’ children live in the larger cities, where schools and compulsory attendance prevail. Were it not for compulsory education, the child of the peasant immigrant would be, like the child of the Slav in the anthracite coal fields, “the helpless victim of the ignorance, frugality, and industrial instincts of his parents.”[137] As it is, they drop out of the schools at the earliest age allowed by law, and the hostility of foreigners to factory legislation and its corollary compulsory school legislation is more difficult to overcome than the hostility of American employers, both of whom might profit by the work of their children. The thoroughness with which the great cities of the North enforce the requirements of primary education leaves but little distinction between the children of natives and the children of foreigners, but what difference remains is to the advantage of the natives. In Boston in 1900 only 5 children of native parents were illiterate, and 22 native children of foreign parents, a ratio of one-twentieth of 1 per cent for the natives and one-tenth of 1 per cent for the foreigners. In New York 68 of the 83,000 children of native parents were illiterate, and 311 of the 166,000 native children of foreign parents, a ratio insignificant in both cases, but more than twice as great for the foreigners as for the natives.[138] Taking all of the cities of at least 50,000 population, more than one-fourth of the foreign-born children 10 to 15 years of age are bread-winners, and only one-tenth of the children of native parents. The influence of residence in America is shown by the fact that of the children of foreigners born in this country the proportion of bread-winners is reduced to one-seventh.[139]

But it is the community more than the school that gives the child his actual working ideals and his habits and methods of life. And in a great city, with its separation of classes, this community is the slums, with its mingling of all races and the worst of the Americans. He sees and knows surprisingly little of the America that his school-books describe. The American churches, his American employers, are in other parts of the city, and his Americanization is left to the school-teacher, the policeman, and the politician, who generally are but one generation before him from Europe. But on the farm he sees and knows all classes, the best and the worst, and even where his parents strive to isolate their community and to preserve the language and the methods of the old country, only a generation or two are required for the surrounding Americanism to permeate. Meanwhile healthful work, steady, industrious, and thrifty habits, have made him capable of rising to the best that his surroundings exemplify.