It was stated on an earlier page that the immigration situation, in most of its important characteristics, presents an entirely new aspect to the men of this generation, and that these changes might be looked for under six general heads, as follows: race, volume, distribution, economic condition of the United States, native birth rate and quality of the immigrants. We are now prepared to consider the truth of this assertion.

In regard to race, nothing further need be said. Sufficient facts are already before the reader to establish the fact that the racial aspect of the situation has undergone a sweeping and significant change in the last thirty years. The change in volume has naturally been one of degree, not of kind. But the change in degree has been a profound one—more so than is often admitted. It has been pointed out occasionally, as a sedative to the fears aroused by the immense immigration of the twentieth century, that while the positive immigration has increased tremendously, it has not increased at so great a rate as the population of the country. The ratio between immigration and total population was higher in the early fifties and early eighties than at any subsequent period. The assumption is that if we could successfully assimilate the immigrants of the earlier period, we certainly ought to be able to take care of those of to-day. But the question of assimilation depends not only upon the ratio of immigrants to total population, but upon the proportion of foreign-born population already in the country. In this connection the following figures are significant. The number of foreign-born to 100,000, native-born in the population of the country at the time of the last seven censuses was as follows:

It thus appears that the proportion of foreign-born, even at the time of the census of 1900, after a decade of very slight immigration, was much higher than at the time of the beginning of large immigration, while the last census, after the enormous immigration of the past ten years, shows a proportion of foreign-born higher than at any previous census, except that of 1890. Now it is the proportion of foreign-born to native-born which determines the assimilating power of the nation, so that without this correction the comparison between immigration and total population is inadequate and misleading. It is as if a fireman whose steam boiler lacked a safety valve was warned that his gauge was going up more and more rapidly all the time, and he replied, “Never mind, the pressure is not coming in so fast, compared to what I already have, as it was awhile ago.”

Another circumstance which affects the ability of the country to assimilate immigrants, and in which there has been a marked change during the history of immigration, is the ratio of men to land, upon which much emphasis has already been laid. As the amount of unappropriated and unsettled land diminishes in any country, the need of new settlers also diminishes, while the difficulty of assimilation and the possible evils resulting from foreign population proportionally increase. In the case of the United States the first and simplest comparison to make is that between immigration and the total territory of the nation. In this, as in the subsequent comparisons, it will be desirable to leave Alaska out of consideration. The enormous extent of that inhospitable region, to which practically none of our immigrants ever find their way, if included in the reckoning, would simply confuse the issue. The gross area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska and Hawaii, at the time of the different censuses, has been as follows: 1790 and 1800, 827,844 square miles; 1810, 1,999,775 square miles; 1820, 2,059,043 square miles; 1830 and 1840, the same; 1850, 2,980,959 square miles; 1860 down to the present, 3,025,600 square miles.^[340]

Estimating the immigration before 1820 at 10,000 per year, and using the official figures after that date, we find that the immigration by decades from 1791 to 1910 was as follows:

Combining these two sets of figures, it appears that for each immigrant coming to this country during the decades specified, there was at the close of the decade the following number of square miles of territory in the United States:

This table illustrates forcibly the fact that from the point of view of the need of new settlers immigration at the present time is a vastly different matter from what it has ever been before in the history of our country. This impression is strengthened if we make another comparison, which is even more significant for our purposes, viz. the relation of immigration to the public domain, that is, to the land which still remains unclaimed and open to settlement. If there were still large tracts of good land lying unutilized, and available for settlement, as there have been in other periods of our history, we could take comfort in the thought that as soon as the incoming aliens caused too great a congestion in any region, the surplus inhabitants would overflow, by a natural process, into the less thickly settled districts. Let us consider what the facts have to show in this respect.

In 1860 there were, as nearly as can be estimated, 939,173,057 acres of land lying unappropriated and unreserved in the public domain. In 1906 there were 424,202,732 acres of such land, representing the leavings, after all the best land had been chosen. In other words, for each immigrant entering the country during the decade ending 1860 there were 374 acres in the public domain, at least half of it extremely valuable farm land. In 1906, for each immigrant entering during the previous ten years, there were 68.9 acres, almost wholly arid and worthless.

The fact that the immigrants in this country do not, to any great extent, take up this unclaimed public land does not destroy the significance of this comparison. As long as there was a strong movement of the native population westward, it was not so much a matter of concern, if large numbers of foreigners were entering the Atlantic seaboard. And this was exactly the case during the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the period of the great internal migration to the new lands of the Middle West. In point of fact also, at this time, many of these pioneers were actually immigrants. It is scarcely necessary to say that nothing comparable to this is going on at the present time. The frontier, which has had such a determining influence on our national life, is a thing of the past. Of the 424,202,732 acres remaining in the public domain in 1906, only a very small part consisted of valuable farm lands, such as existed in great abundance when the Homestead Act was passed in 1862. Evidence of this fact is furnished by the act recently passed allowing homesteads of 640 acres to be taken up in certain sections of Nebraska, where it is impossible for a man to make a living from less. Not only are the incoming hordes of aliens not now counterbalanced by an important internal migration, but there is an actual movement, of noteworthy dimensions, of ambitious young farmers from the United States to the new and cheaper wheat lands in Canada.

This set of conditions may be stated in another way by saying that the United States has changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing and commercial nation.^[341] In the early nineteenth century the rural family was the typical one, to-day it is the urban family. Then the simplicity and independence of the farm gave character to the national life; to-day it is the complexity and artificiality of the city which govern. The nineteenth century was a period of expansion. Particularly in the earlier part of it was the subduing of new land the fundamental consideration of national development. This was the period of internal improvements, the building of roads and canals, and later of railroads. It was the adolescence of the American people. At such a period the great demand is for accessions of population, and it is no wonder that many of the writers of that day were frank in their demands for the encouragement of immigration. And even in the thirties and forties, though the miserable shipping conditions and the large number of incoming paupers aroused a countercurrent of opinion, still the immigrants found a logical place on the great construction works of the period, as well as on the vacant arable lands.

This period is past. The labors of the typical alien are not now expended on the railroad, the canal, or the farm, but in the mines and foundries, the sweatshops and factories. The immigrants of to-day are meeting an economic demand radically different from that of a century or half a century, yes, we may say a quarter of a century ago.^[342]

This change is further exemplified by the increased concentration of population in cities which the United States has witnessed in the past century. In 1790 there were only 6 cities in the United States with over 8000 population each, containing 3.4 per cent of the total population. In 1840 the percentage of population in cities of this size was still only 8.4. But in 1900 there were 545 cities of over 8000, counting among their inhabitants 33.1 per cent of the total population. In other words, the ratio between city and country dwellers (taking the city of 8000 as the dividing line) has changed from one to twenty-eight in 1790 to one to two in 1900. At the same time the average density of population of the country as a whole has increased from 3.7 per square mile in 1810 to 10.8 in 1860, 17.3 in 1880, and 25.6 in 1900.

Hand in hand with these changes has come a sweeping change in the scale of production, which must have an important bearing on the immigration situation. The early immigrants, to a very large extent, came into more or less close personal relations with their employers, often working side by side with them on the farm or in the shop. Now foreigners are hired by the thousands by employers whom they perhaps never see, certainly never have any dealings with, the arrangements being made through some underling, very likely a foreigner himself. Working all day side by side with others of their own race, or of other races equally foreign, and going home at night to crowded dwellings, inhabited by aliens, and with a European atmosphere, the modern immigrants have but slight commerce with anything that is calculated to inculcate American ideas or contribute any real Americanizing influence.

Mention of the declining native birth rate in the United States had already been made (Chapter XI), with some consideration of the causes thereof. The fact needs to be called attention to in this connection as another element in the changed aspect of immigration. It is unfortunate that our census figures do not give us positive data as to the respective birth rates of the native-born and foreign-born, so that we have to rely upon estimates. All of these estimates, however, agree that there has been a marked decline in the rate of native increase, though the causes assigned vary. The population of the United States in 1810 was 1.84 times as great as in 1790, and that of 1840, 1.77 times as great as twenty years earlier. Since the immigration during all this period was relatively slight, this increase may be taken as representing a very high native birth rate. In 1900, in spite of the large element of foreign-born with a high birth rate then in the country, and the large immigration of the previous twenty years, the population of the country was only 1.52 times as large as in 1880. This must represent a tremendous fall in the native birth rate. Mr. S. G. Fisher has estimated that the rate of native increase by decades has fallen from 33.76 per cent in the decade ending 1820 to 24.53 in the decade ending 1890. Some eminent authorities, as previously mentioned, are of the opinion that at the present time the native population of parts, if not the whole, of New England is not even maintaining itself. Thus our present immigrants are being received by, and are mingling with, a people, not vigorous and prolific as in the early days, able to match the crowds of aliens with a host of native-born offspring, but weak in reproductive power, and constantly decreasing in the ability to maintain itself. In this connection it is significant that during the last intercensal decade the total foreign-born population increased 30.7 per cent, while the native-born population increased only 19.5 per cent. This fact, in connection with the high birth rate of our now large foreign-born population, puts a new face on the question of the elimination of the native stock.

There yet remains to be considered the matter of the quality of immigrants to-day as compared with those of past generations. In regard to this but little can be said in the way of positive declarations. Quality in an immigrant is a very uncertain matter, and differs according to the individual point of view and prejudices. What may seem to an employer of labor high quality in an immigrant may appear quite the reverse in the eyes of a minister. With the facts of immigration in mind, each student of the question must determine for himself whether the quality of our present immigrants compares favorably with that of earlier groups. There is, however, one consideration to which attention should be directed when examining changes, which has materially altered the character of immigration. This is the selective influence of the act of immigration itself, upon those who are to come. It used to be the prevailing idea that the immigrant represented the better individuals of his race or class, that he was more daring, energetic, or enterprising. Traces of this notion are still very common.^[343] There was, moreover, a great amount of truth in this view during earlier periods of immigration. Many of the migrations of two or three centuries ago were inspired by religious or political motives, or very often by a combination of the two. Such was the exodus of the Huguenots from France, of the Palatines from Germany, the Puritans from England, the Scotch-Irish from Ireland. In such cases as these, emigration implies strength of character, independence, firmness of conviction, moral courage, bravery, hatred of oppression, etc. Motives such as these played no small part in immigration movements even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century.

More than this, it is doubtless true that the earliest immigration from any region at any time involves a certain degree of ambition, independence, courage, energy, forethought, all of those characteristics which are required in the individual who forsakes the known for the unknown, the familiar for the untried, the stable for the unstable, the certain though hopeless present for the hopeful but uncertain future. Such were the early immigrants to this country from every land—not north European alone, but south European. They possessed something of the intrepidity and daring of pioneers. They had the strength of character to break the shackles of age-long tradition and custom, and, taking their destiny in their hand, seek their fortune in a new and unknown land. In this respect all new immigration differs from all established immigration.

But all this is now a thing of the past. 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 presidential election, the panic, the state of the crops in the United States, are familiar topics of conversation.^[344] Almost every individual in the established currents of immigration has at least one friend in this country. Many of them know exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. To a host of them the change is no greater than to go to the next village in their native land, perhaps less so. For as likely as not, just as many of their friends and relatives are awaiting them in the new country as are lamenting them in the old.

Neither is the voyage to-day, bad as it is, beset with the uncertainties, hardships, and perils which used to characterize it. The way is cleared for the travelers at every step. If their ticket is not actually supplied to them from America, probably all or part of the money with which it is purchased came from America. At least they may now secure a ticket direct from a European center to their ultimate destination in America, and every stage of the journey is facilitated by the ingenuity of financially interested agents. Induced immigration has always existed since the days when the press gangs in the coast towns of England carried inducement to the point of abduction. But probably never in the history of our country has artificially stimulated immigration formed so large a part of the whole as now. There is nothing, therefore, in the modern conditions of immigration which serves as a guaranty of high quality in the immigrants.

One other element which concerns the quality of the immigrant, and therefore should be mentioned in this connection, is the immense increase in what may be designated temporary or seasonal immigration. The prominence of this type of movement in recent years has radically modified the industrial aspect of the situation.^[345]

It is possible that some of the changes reviewed above may be of a beneficial character. However that may be, there can be no question that, taken together, they indicate so complete an alteration in the circumstances surrounding the admission of aliens to this country as to require that the entire immigration situation be considered in the light of present conditions, rather than of past history. The old stock arguments, pro and con, which seem to have stood the test of time, need to be thoroughly reviewed. The modern immigrant must be viewed in the setting of to-day. Especially must it be borne in mind that the fact—if such it be—that immigration in the past has worked no injury to the nation, and has resulted in good to the immigrants, by no means indicates that a continuance of past policy and practice in the matter will entail no serious evil consequences, nor bring about disaster in the future.