Races And Immigrants In America Part 3

Parts of Lombardy and Venetia have a thicker population than any other European country except Belgium, which is really not a country, but a manufacturing centre of Europe. The density of population in Italy is in excess of that of Germany, France, India, and even China. It is exceeded only by the islands of Great Britain and j.a.pan, and the states of Rhode Island and Ma.s.sachusetts.[46] Emigration is the only immediate relief from this congestion. All other remedies which operate through raising the intelligence and the standards of living require years for appreciable results, but meanwhile the persistent birth-rate crowds new compet.i.tors into the new openings and multiplies the need of economic and political reforms before they can be put into effect. Emigration is a relief ready at hand, but it is not a lessening of population. For many years to come Italy will furnish a surplus population to overflow to America.[47] Emigration is also a means of revenue for the mother country. For it is estimated that the peasants in foreign countries send back to their families and relatives $30,000,000 to $80,000,000 each year, and many of them return with what to them is a fortune, and with new ideas of industry and progress, to purchase and improve a farm and cottage for their declining years. It is said that already there are several small country towns in Southern Italy which have risen from squalor to something of prosperity through the money and influence of those who have come home. This temporary emigration is probably over 150,000 each year going abroad or to adjoining countries expecting to return.

Besides this temporary emigration there is an equally large permanent emigration. This is of two kinds, almost as entirely distinct from each other as the emigration from two separate nations. The North Italian is an educated, skilled artisan, coming from a manufacturing section and largely from the cities. He is Teutonic in blood and appearance. The South Italian is an illiterate peasant from the great landed estates, with wages less than one-third his northern compatriot. He descends with less mixture from the ancient inhabitants of Italy. Unhappily for us, the North Italians do not come to the United States in considerable numbers, but they betake themselves to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in about the same numbers as the South Italians come to us. It is estimated that in those three countries there are 3,000,000 Italians in a total population of 23,000,000, and they are mainly derived from the north of Italy. Surrounded by the unenterprising Spanish and Portuguese, they have shown themselves to be the industrial leaders of the country. Some of the chief buildings, banks, flour mills, textile mills, and a majority of the wheat farms of Argentina belong to Italians. They are one-third of the population of Buenos Ayres and own one-half of the commercial capital of that city. They become lawyers, engineers, members of parliament, and an Italian by descent has been president of the Republic of Argentina, while other Italians have been ministers of war and education.[48] While these North Italians, with their enterprise, intelligence, and varied capacities, go to South America, we receive the South Italians, who are nearly the most illiterate of all immigrants at the present time, the most subservient to superiors, the lowest in their standards of living, and at the same time the most industrious and thrifty of all common laborers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALIENS AWAITING ADMISSION AT ELLIS ISLAND]

=Austria-Hungary.=--Next to that from Italy the immigration from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in recent decades has reached the largest dimensions. While Italy sent 273,000 people in 1906, Austria-Hungary sent 265,000 in that year and 276,000 the year before. Like the immigration from Italy, this increase has occurred since 1880. Prior to that date the largest number reported from Austria-Hungary was 9000 in 1874.

While these figures compare with those of the Italians, yet, unlike the Italians, they refer to a congeries of races and languages distinct one from another. The significance of Austro-Hungarian immigration is revealed only when we a.n.a.lyze it by races. The race map of this empire shows at once the most complicated social mosaic of all modern nations.

Here we see, not that mixture of races and a.s.similation of language which in our own country has evolved a vigorous, united people, but a juxtaposition of hostile races and a fixity of language held together only by the outside pressure of Russia, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. This conflict of races has made the politics of the empire nearly incomprehensible to foreigners, and has aggravated the economic inequalities which drive the unprivileged ma.s.ses to emigrate.

Not only are there in Austria-Hungary five grand divisions of the human family,--the German, the Slav, the Magyar, the Latin, and the Jew,--but these are again subdivided. In the northern mountainous and hilly sections are 13,000,000 Slavic peoples, the Czechs, or Bohemians, with their closely related Moravians, and the Slavic Slovaks, Poles, and Ruthenians (known also as Russniaks); while in the southern hills and along the Adriatic are another 4,000,000 Slavs, the Croatians, Servians, Dalmatians, and Slovenians. Between these divisions on the fertile plains 8,000,000 Magyars and 10,000,000 Germans have thrust themselves as the dominant races. To the southwest are nearly a million Italians, and in the east 2,500,000 Latinized Slavs, the Roumanians. The Slavs are in general the conquered peoples, with a German and Magyar n.o.bility owning their land, making their laws, and managing their administration.

The northern Slavs are subject to Austria and Hungary, and the Ruthenians suffer a double subjection, for they were the serfs of their fellow-Slavs, the Poles, whom they continue to hate, and in whose longings for a reunited Poland they do not partic.i.p.ate. The southern Slavs and Roumanians are subject to Hungary. The Roumanians are a widespread and disrupted nationality of Slavs, conquered by the Romans, from whom they imperfectly took their language, but now distributed partly in independent kingdoms and partly under the dominion of the Magyars. The Croatians from the southwest mountains are among the finest specimens of physical manhood coming to our sh.o.r.es. They are a vigorous people, hating Hungary which owns them and calling themselves "Austrians" to ward off the name "Hun," by which Americans mistakenly designate them. The Magyars are the Asiactic conquerors who overran Europe ten centuries ago, and being repulsed by the Teutons to the west established themselves on the Slavs in the valley and plains of the Danube. Boasting a republican const.i.tution a thousand years old they have not until the past year been compelled to share it with the people whom they subdued. Astute politicians and dashing military leaders, they are as careless in business as the Slavs, and the supremacy which they maintained in politics has slipped into the hands of the Jews in economics. In no other modern country has the Jew been so liberally treated, and in no other country have public and private finance come more completely under his control. Profiting by the Magyars' suppression of the Slavs, the Jew has monopolized the business opportunities denied to the Slovak and the Croatian, and with this leverage has quietly elbowed out the Magyar himself. No longer is the Magyar the dominant race, and in the past year he has contributed to America more immigrants than any branch of his conquered Slavs. In the Austrian dominions of former Poland the Jew likewise has become the financier, and both the Ruthenian and the Pole, unable to rise under their burden of debt, contribute their more enterprising peasants to America.

By a perverse system of representative government, based on representation of cla.s.ses both in Austria and in Hungary, the great landowners and wealthy merchants have heretofore elected three-fourths of the parliaments, but recently in both countries the emperor has granted universal manhood suffrage. The peasant Slavs will henceforth be on equal footing with the German, the Magyar, and the Jew, and whether out of the belated equality of races there will come equality of economic opportunity remains to be seen. For the past few years the emigration from the unfortunate dual empire has amazingly increased.

With all of this confusing medley of races, with this diversity of Greek and Roman Catholicism and Judaism, with this history of race oppression and hatred, it is not surprising that the immigrants should break out into factions and feuds wherever thrown together among us. It is the task of America to lift them to a patriotism which hitherto in their native land they could not know.

The earliest migration from Austria-Hungary was that of the Bohemians, the most highly educated and ardently patriotic of the Slavic people.

After the revolution of 1848, when the Germans suppressed their patriotic uprising, students, professional men, and well-to-do peasants came to America and settled in New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, and in the rural districts of Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and California. Again, after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, skilled laborers were added to the stream, and they captured a large part of the cigar-making industry of New York and the clothing trade of Chicago.

Latterly recruits from the peasants and unskilled laborers sought the sections where the pioneers had located, learned the same trades, or joined the armies of common labor. In Chicago the Bohemian section is almost a self-governing city, with its own language, industries, schools, churches, and newspapers. After a slight decline there is again an increasing flow of immigrants, the number in 1906 being 13,000. Those who come bring their families, and few return. In these earlier days the Polish and Hungarian Jews also began their migration, following the steps of their German precursors.

In the decade of the eighties the increase of immigration from Austria-Hungary was first that of the Poles, now numbering 44,000, then the Magyars, now 43,000, then the Slovaks, now 37,000. In the latter part of the nineties the Southern Slavs--Croatians and Slovenians--suddenly took up their burden, and 43,000 of them came in 1906. Following them came the Ruthenians from the North, numbering 16,000 in 1906. Last of all, the Latinized Slavs, the Roumanians, began their flight from the Magyar, to the number of less than 400 in the year 1900, but swelling to 11,000 in 1906. Only 300 additional came from their own proper kingdom--Roumania. During all this period there has been also a considerable migration of Germans, reaching 35,000 in 1906.

In the face of this swollen migration the Hungarian government has at last taken alarm. They see even their own people, the Magyars, escaping.

Recently the government has attempted to restrict the unrest by prohibiting advertis.e.m.e.nts or public speeches advocating emigration, by prohibiting the sale of tickets or solicitation by any one not holding a government license for the purpose, by contracting with a steamship line from their own Adriatic part of Fiume in order to reduce migration across the German and Italian frontiers. This may account for the decline of ten thousand immigrants from Austria-Hungary in 1906.

Practically the entire migration of the Slavic elements at the present time is that of peasants. In Croatia the forests have been depleted, and thousands of immigrant wood-choppers have sought the forests of our South and the railway construction of the West. The natural resources of Croatia are by no means inadequate, but the discriminating taxes and railway freight rates imposed by Hungary have prevented the development of these resources. The needed railways are not obtainable for the development of the mines and minerals of Croatia, and the peasants, unable to find employment at home, are allured by the advertis.e.m.e.nts of American steamships and the agents of American contractors.

So it is with the Slovak peasants and mine workers of the northern mountains and foothills. With agricultural wages only eighteen cents a day, they find employment in the American mines, rolling-mills, stock-yards, and railroad construction at $1.50 a day.

In addition to race discrimination, the blight of Austria-Hungary is landlordism. Considerable reforms, indeed, have been made in certain sections. The free alienation of landed property was adopted in the Austrian dominions in 1869, and in the following twelve years 42,000 new holdings were carved out of the existing peasant proprietorships in Bohemia. Similar transfers have occurred elsewhere, but even where this peasant ownership has gained, the enormous prices are an obstacle to economic independence. They compel the land-owning peasant to content himself with five to twelve acres, the size of four-fifths of the farms in Galicia. His eagerness to own land is his dread of the mere wage-earner's lot, which he no longer dreads when he lands in America.

"The fear of falling from the social position of a peasant to that, immeasurably inferior, of a day laborer, is the great spur which drives over the seas alike the Slovak, the Pole, and the Ruthenian."[49] These high rentals and fabulous values can exist only where wages and standards of living are at the bare subsistence level, leaving a heavy surplus for capitalization. They also exist as a result of most economical and minute cultivation, so that, with this training, the Bohemian or Polish farmer who takes up land in America soon becomes a well-to-do citizen.

Taxation, too, is unequal. For many years the government suffered deficits, the military expenses increased, and worst of all, the n.o.bility were exempt from taxation. The latter injustice, however, was remedied by the revolution of 1848, and yet at the present time the great landowners pay much less than their proportionate share of the land-tax, to say nothing of the heavy taxes on consumption and industry.

As in other countries of low standards, the number of births is large in proportion to the inhabitants. For every one thousand persons in Hungary, there are forty-three births each year,[50] a number exceeded by but one great country of Europe, Russia. Yet, with this large number of births, because the economic conditions are so onerous and the consequent deaths so frequent, the net increase is less than that of any other country except France. In Austria the births and deaths are less and the net increase greater, and they run close to those of prolific Italy.

In each of these countries the figures for births and deaths stand near those of the negroes in America, and like the negroes, two-fifths of the mortality is that of children under five years of age, whereas with other more favored countries and races this proportion is only one-fifth or one-fourth. It is not so much the overpopulation of Austria-Hungary that incites emigration as it is the poverty, ignorance, inequality, and helplessness that produce a seeming overpopulation. While these conditions continue, emigration will continue to increase, and the efforts of the Hungarian government to reduce it will not succeed.

=Russia.=--The Russian Empire is at the present time the third in the rank of contributors to American immigration. Russian immigration, like that of Italy and Austria-Hungary, is practically limited to the past two decades. In 1881 it first reached 10,000. In 1893 it was 42,000, and in 1906, 216,000.

The significant fact of this immigration is that it is only 2 per cent Russian and 98 per cent non-Russian. The Russian peasant is probably the most oppressed of the peasants of Europe, and though his recent uprising has aroused his intellect and disabused the former opinion of his stupidity, yet he has been so tied to the soil by his system of communism, his burden of taxes and debt and his subjection to landlords, that he is as yet immune to the fever of migration. In so far as he has moved from his native soil he has done so through the efforts of a despotic government to Russianize Siberia and the newly conquered regions of his own vast domain. On the other hand, the races which have abandoned the Russian Empire have been driven forth because they refused to submit to the policy which would by force a.s.similate them to the language or religion of the dominant race. Even the promises of the aristocracy under the fright of recent revolution have not mitigated the persecutions, and the number taking refuge in flight has doubled in four years. Foremost are the Jews, 125,000 in 1906, an increase from 37,000 four years ago; next the Poles, 46,000 in 1906; next 14,000 Lithuanians, 13,000 Finns, and 10,000 Germans. The Poles and Lithuanians are Slavic peoples long since conquered and annexed by the Russians. The Finns are a Teutonic people with a Mongol language; the Germans are an isolated branch of that race settled far to the east on the Volga River by invitation of the Czar more than one hundred years ago, or on the Baltic provinces adjoining Germany; while the Jews are the unhappy descendants of a race whom the Russians found in territory conquered during the past two centuries.

=The Jews.=--Russia, at present, sends us five-sixths of the Jewish immigration, but the other one-sixth comes from adjoining territory in Austria-Hungary and Roumania. About six thousand temporarily sojourn in England, and the Whitechapel district of East London is a reduced picture of the East Side, New York. During American history Jews have come hither from all countries of Europe. The first recorded immigration was that of Dutch Jews, driven from Brazil by the Portuguese and received by the Dutch government of New Amsterdam. The descendants of these earliest immigrants continue at the present time in their own peculiar congregation in lower New York City. Quite a large number of Portuguese and Spanish Jews, expelled from those countries in the time of Columbus, have contributed their descendants to America by way of Holland. The German Jews began their migration in small numbers during colonial times, but their greatest influx followed the Napoleonic wars and reached its height at the middle of the century. Prior to the last two decades so predominant were the German Jews that, to the ordinary American, all Jews were Germans. Strangely enough, the so-called Russian Jew is also a German, and in Russia among the ma.s.ses of people the words "German" and "Jew" also mean the same thing. Hereby hangs a tale of interest in the history of this persecuted race. Jews are known to have settled at the site of the present city of Frankfort in Southern Germany as early as the third century, when that town was a trading post on the Roman frontier. At the present time the region about Frankfort, extending south through Alsace, contains the major part of the German and French Jews. To this centre they flocked during the Middle Ages, and their toleration in this region throws an interesting light on the reasons for their persecution in other countries.

Under the Catholic polity following the crusades the Jew had no rights, and he could therefore gain protection only through the personal favor of emperor, king, or feudal lord. This protection was arbitrary and capricious, but it was always based on a pecuniary consideration.

Unwittingly the Catholic Church, by its prohibition of usury to all believers, had thrown the business of money lending into the hands of the Jews, and since the Jew was neither inclined toward agriculture nor permitted to follow that vocation, his only sources of livelihood were trade and usury. The sovereigns of Europe who protected the Jews did so in view of the large sums which they could exact from their profits as usurers and traders. They utilized the Jews like sponges to draw from their subjects illicit taxes. When, therefore, the people gained power over their sovereigns, and the spirit of nationality arose, the Jew, without his former protector, was the object of persecution. England was the first country where this spirit of nationality emerged and the first to expel the Jews (1290); France followed a century later (1395); and Spain and Portugal two centuries later (1492 and 1495). But in Germany and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire political confusion and anarchy prevailed, and the emperor and petty sovereigns were able to continue their protection of the Jews.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORWEGIAN ITALIAN ARABIC (From _The Home Missionary_)]

The Russian people, at that time, were confined to the interior surrounding Moscow, but even before the crusades they had expelled the Jews. As rapidly as they conquered territory to the south from Turkey, or to the west from Poland, they carried forward the same hostility.

There was only one country, Poland, in the centre of Europe, where the kings, desiring to build up their cities, invited the Jews, and hither the persecuted race fled from the East before the Russians, and latterly from the West, driven out by the Germans. When finally, a hundred years ago, the remnant of the Polish Empire was divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the Jewish population in this favored area had become the largest aggregation of that people since the destruction of Jerusalem. To-day in certain of these provinces belonging to Russia the Jews number as high as one-sixth of the entire population, and more than half of that of several cities. Fifteen provinces taken from Poland and Turkey, extending 1500 miles along the border of Germany and Austria-Hungary and 240 miles in width, const.i.tute to-day the "Pale of Settlement," the region where Jews are permitted to live. Here are found one-third of the world's 11,000,000 Jews.[51] Here they formerly engaged in all lines of industry, including agriculture.

Now we come to the last great national uprising, like that which began in England six hundred years ago. The Russian serfs had been freed in 1861. But they were left without land or capital and were burdened by high rents and enormous taxes. The Jews became their merchants, middlemen, and usurers. Suddenly, in 1881, the peasants, oppressed and neglected by landlord and government, turned in their helplessness upon the intermediate cause of their misery, the Jew. The anti-Semitic riots of that year have perhaps never been exceeded in ferocity and indiscriminate destruction. Then began the migration to America. The next year the Russian government took up the persecution, and the notorious "May Orders" of 1882 were promulgated. These, at the instigation of the Greek Church, have been followed by orders more stringent, so that to-day, unless relieved by the terrorized promises of the Czar, the Jew is not permitted to foreclose a mortgage or to lease or purchase land; he cannot do business on Sundays or Christian holidays; he cannot hold office; he cannot worship or a.s.semble without police permit; he must serve in the army, but cannot become an officer; he is excluded from schools and universities; he is fined for conducting manufactures and commerce; he is almost prohibited from the learned professions. While all other social questions are excluded from discussion, the anti-Semitic press is given free play, and the popular hatred of the Jew is stirred to frenzy by "yellow" journals. Only when this hatred breaks out in widespread riots does the news reach America, but the persecution is constant and relentless. The government and the army join with the peasants, for, true to the character of this versatile race, the Jews are leaders of the revolutionary and socialistic patriots who seek to overthrow the government and restore the land to the people.

Nor is this uprising confined to Russia. Galician Jews in the Austrian possessions of former Poland, where the Slavs bitterly complain of them as saloon-keepers and money-lenders,[52] have suffered the persecutions of their race, and in the last ten years Roumania, a country of peasants adjoining Hungary and Russia, has adopted laws and regulations even more oppressive than those of her neighbor.

Thus it is that this marvellous and paradoxical race, the parent of philosophers, artists, reformers, martyrs, and also of the shrewdest exploiters of the poor and ignorant, has, in two decades, come to America in far greater numbers than in the two centuries preceding.

It should not be inferred that the Jews are a race of pure descent.

Coming as they do from all sections and nations of Europe, they are truly cosmopolitan, and have taken on the language, customs, and modes of thought of the people among whom they live. More than this, in the course of centuries, their physical characteristics have departed from those of their Semitic cousins in the East, and they have become a.s.similated in blood with their European neighbors. In Russia, especially in the early centuries, native tribes were converted to Judaism and mingled with their proselyters. That which makes the Jew a peculiar people is not altogether the purity of his blood, but persecution, devotion to his religion, and careful training of his children. Among the Jews from Eastern Europe there are marked intellectual and moral differences. The Hungarian Jew, who emigrated earliest, is adventurous and speculative: the Southern Russian keeps few of the religious observances, is the most intellectual and socialistic, and most inclined to the life of a wage-earner; the Western Russian is orthodox and emotional, saves money, becomes a contractor and retail merchant; the Galician Jew is the poorest, whose conditions at home were the harshest, and he begins American life as a pedler. That which unites them all as a single people is their religious training and common language.

The Hebrew language is read and written by all the men and half of the women, but is not spoken except by a few especially orthodox Jews on Sat.u.r.day. Hebrew is the language of business and correspondence, Yiddish the language of conversation, just as Latin in the Middle Ages was the official and international language, while the various peoples spoke each its own vernacular. The Yiddish spoken by the Russian Jews in America is scarcely a language--it is a jargon without syntax, conjugation, or declension. Its basis is sixty per cent German of the sixteenth century, showing the main origin of the people, and forty per cent the language of the countries whence they come.

That which most of all has made the Jew a cause of alarm to the peasants of Eastern Europe is the highest mark of his virtue, namely, his rapid increase in numbers. A high birth-rate, a low death-rate, a long life, place the Jew as far above the average as the negro is below the average. These two races are the two extremes of American race vitality.

Says Ripley:[53]--

"Suppose two groups of one hundred infants each, one Jewish, one of average American parentage (Ma.s.sachusetts), to be born on the same day.

In spite of the disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter, the chances, determined by statistical means, are that one-half of the Americans will die within forty-seven years; while the first half of the Jews will not succ.u.mb to disease or accident before the expiration of seventy-one years. The death-rate is really but little over half that of the average American population."

While the negro exceeds all races in the const.i.tutional diseases of consumption and pneumonia, the Jew excels all in immunity from these diseases. His vitality is ascribed to his sanitary meat inspection, his sobriety, temperance, and self-control. Of the Jew it might be said more truly than of any other European people that the growth of population has led to overcrowding and has induced emigration. Yet of no people is this less true, for, were it not for the discrimination and persecution directed against them, the Jews would be the most prosperous and least overcrowded of the races of Europe.

=The Finns.=--Until the year 1901 Finland was the freest and best governed part of the Russian Empire. Wrested from Sweden in 1809, it became a grand duchy of the Czar, guaranteed self-government, and confirmed by coronation oath of each successor. It was the only section of the Russian Empire with a const.i.tutional government in which the laws, taxes, and army were controlled by a legislature representing the people. Here alone in all his empire was the Czar compelled to ask the consent of parliament in order to enact laws. But these free inst.i.tutions within the past seven years were by his decree abrogated.

The Czar claimed the right to put into force such laws as he chose without discussion or acceptance by the Finnish diet. The Russian language took the place of Swedish and Finnish as the official medium, a severe censorship of the press was introduced, the Lutheran religion, devoutly adhered to, was subordinated to the "orthodox," the independent Finnish army was abolished and Finns were distributed throughout the armies of the empire, and a Russian governor with absolute powers was placed over all. Thus have 2,000,000 of the st.u.r.diest specimens of humanity been suddenly reduced to the level of Asiatic despotism. They had managed by industry and thrift to extort a livelihood from a sterile soil, and had developed a school system with universal education, culminating in one of the n.o.blest universities of Europe. Their peasants are healthy, intelligent, honest, and sober. In one year, 1900, their emigration increased from 6000 to 12,000, and it continues at 14,000, notwithstanding the repentance of the Czar and his restoration of their stolen rights. Compared with the population of the country, the present immigration from Finland is proportionately greater than that of any race except the Jews; and famine, adding its horrors to the loss of their liberties, has served to augment the army of exiles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLAV JEWISH POLACK LITHUANIAN (From _The Home Missionary_)]

Much dispute has arisen respecting the racial relations of the Finns.

Their language is like that of the Magyars, an agglutinative tongue with tendencies towards inflections, but their physical structure allies them more nearly to the Teutons. Their Lutheran religion also separates them from other peoples of the Russian Empire. Their sober industriousness and high intelligence give them a place above that of their intolerant conquerors; and the futile attempts of the Slav to "Russify" them drove to America many of our most desirable immigrants.

=The French Canadians.=--When Canada was conquered by England in 1759, it contained a French population of 65,000. Without further immigration the number had increased in 1901 to 2,400,000, including 1,600,000 in Canada and 800,000 emigrants and their children in the United States. Scarcely another race has multiplied as rapidly, doubling every twenty-five years. The contrast with the same race in France, where population is actually declining, is most suggestive. French Canada is, as it were, a bit of mediaeval France, picked out and preserved for the curious student of social evolution. No French revolution broke down its old inst.i.tutions, and the English conquest changed little else than the oath of allegiance. Language, customs, laws, and property rights remained intact. The only state church in North America is the Roman Catholic Church of Quebec, with its great wealth, its control of education, and its right to levy t.i.thes and other church dues. With a standard of living lower than that of the Irish or Italians, and a population increasing even more rapidly, the French from Canada for a time seemed destined to displace other races in the textile mills of New England. Yet they came only as sojourners, intending by the work of every member of the family to save enough money to return to Canada, purchase a farm, and live in relative affluence. Their migration began at the close of the Civil War, and during periods of prosperity they swarmed to the mill towns, while in periods of depression they returned to their Northern homes. Gradually an increasing proportion remained in "the States," and the number in 1900 was 395,000 born in Canada, and 436,000 children born on this side of the line.

=The Portuguese.=--A diminutive but interesting migration of recent years is that of the Portuguese, who come, not from Portugal, but from the Cape Verde and Azores Islands, near equatorial Africa. These islands are remarkably overpopulated, and the emigration, nearly 9000 souls in 1906, is a very large proportion of the total number of inhabitants. By two methods did they find their way to America. One was almost accidental, for it was the wreck of a Portuguese vessel on the New England coast that first directed their attention to that section. They have settled mainly at New Bedford, Ma.s.sachusetts, where they follow the fisheries in the summer and enter the mills in the winter. The other method was solicitation, which took several thousand of them to Hawaii as contract laborers on the sugar plantations. Unlike the Oriental importations to these islands the Portuguese insisted that their families be imported, and then as soon as their contracts expired they left the planters to become small farmers, and are now the backbone of the coffee industry.

They and their children are nearly half of the "Caucasian" element of 30,000. In Ma.s.sachusetts they are of two distinct types, the whites from the Azores and the blacks from the Cape Verde Islands, the latter plainly a blend of Portuguese and Africans. Their standards of living are similar to those of the Italians, though they are distinguished by their cleanliness and the neatness of their homes.

=Syrians and Armenians.=--That the recruiting area of American immigration is extending eastward is no more clearly evident than in the recent migration of Syrians and Armenians. These peoples belong to the Christian races of Asiatic Turkey, whence they are escaping the oppressions of a government which deserves the name of organized robbery rather than government. Within the past thirty years many thousand Syrians of Mount Lebanon have emigrated to Egypt and other Mediterranean countries, to the dependencies of Great Britain and South America. Six thousand of them came to the United States in 1906. They belong mainly to the Greek Church or the Maronite branch of the Roman Catholic Church, and it is mainly American missionary effort that has diverted them to the United States. Unlike other immigrants, they come princ.i.p.ally from the towns, and are traders and pedlers. Broadly speaking, says an agent of the Charity Organization Society of New York, "the well-intentioned efforts of the missionaries have been abused by their proteges.... It is these alleged proselytes who have contributed largely to bring into relief the intrinsically servile character of the Syrian, his ingrat.i.tude and mendacity, his prost.i.tution of all ideals to the huckster level.... As a rule they affiliate themselves with some Protestant church or mission, abandoning such connections when no longer deemed necessary or profitable."[54]

The Armenian migration began with the monstrous Kurdish atrocities of recent years, instigated and supported by the Turkish government.

Armenians are a primitive branch of the Christian religion, and at an early date became separated from both the Greek and Roman churches. They are among the shrewdest of merchants, traders, and money-lenders of the Orient, and, like the Jews, are hated by the peasantry and persecuted by the government. Like the Jews also, religious persecution has united them to the number of five million in a racial type of remarkable purity and distinctness from the surrounding races.

=Asiatic Immigration.=--Utterly distinct from all other immigrants in the nineteenth century are the Chinese. Coming from a civilization already ancient when Europe was barbarian, the Chinaman complacently refuses to a.s.similate with Americans, and the latter reciprocate by denying him the right of citizenship. His residence is temporary, he comes without his family, and he acc.u.mulates what to him is a fortune for his declining years in China. The gold discoveries of California first attracted him, and the largest migration was 40,000 in 1882, the year when Congress prohibited further incoming. In 1906, 3015 Chinamen tried to get in, and 2732 were admitted, mainly as United States citizens, returning merchants and returning laborers. One-half of the 1448 admitted as "exempt" were believed by the immigration officials to have been coolies in disguise.[55] Within the past ten years the j.a.panese have taken his place, and 14,000 of his Mongolian cousins arrived in 1906.

The immigration of the j.a.panese has taken a peculiar turn owing to the annexation of Hawaii. While these islands were yet a kingdom in 1868 this immigration began, and in 1886 a treaty was concluded with j.a.pan for the immigration of j.a.panese contract laborers for the benefit of the sugar planters. Many thousand were imported under this arrangement, and "the fear that the islands would be annexed to j.a.pan was one of the prime factors in the demand for annexation to the United States."[56]