Races And Immigrants In America Part 9

Universal suffrage admits the immigrant to American politics within one to five years after landing. But the suffrage is not looked upon to-day as the sufficient Americanizing force that a preceding generation imagined. The suffrage appeals very differently to the immigrant voter and to the voter who has come up through the American schools and American life. The American has learned not only that this is a free government, but that its freedom is based on const.i.tutional principles of an abstract nature. Freedom of the press, trial by jury, separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, equality of opportunity, and several other governmental and legal principles have percolated through his subconscious self, and when he contemplates public questions these abstract principles have more or less influence as a guide to his ballot. But the immigrant has none of these. He comes here solely to earn a better living. The suffrage is nothing to him but a means of livelihood. Not that he readily sells his vote for money--rather does he simply "vote for his job." He votes as instructed by his employer or his political "boss," because it will help his employer's business or because his boss will get him a job, or will, in some way, favor him and others of his nationality. There is a noticeable difference between the immigrant and the children of the immigrant in this regard. The young men, when they begin to vote, can be appealed to on the ground of public spirit; their fathers can be reached only on the ground of private interest.

Now it cannot be expected that the labor-union or any other influence will greatly change the immigrant in this respect. But the union does this much: it requires every member to be a citizen, or to have declared his intention of taking out naturalization papers. The reasons for doing this are not political; they are sentimental and patriotic. The union usually takes pride in showing that its members are Americans, and have foregone allegiance to other countries. In a union like the musicians'

the reasons for requiring citizenship are also protective, since they serve to exclude transient musical immigrants from American audiences.

Again, the union frees its members from the dictation of employers, bosses, and priests. Politicians, of course, strive to control the vote of organized labor, but so disappointing has been the experience of the unions that they have quite generally come to distrust the leader who combines labor and politics. The immigrant who votes as a unionist has taken the first step, in casting his ballot, towards considering the interests of others, and this is also the first step towards giving public spirit and abstract principles a place alongside private interest and his own job.

But there is another way, even more impressive, in which the union a.s.serts the preeminence of principles over immediate self-interest. When the foreigner from Southern Europe is inducted into the union, then for the first time does he get the idea that his job belongs to him by virtue of a right to work, and not as the personal favor or whim of a boss. These people are utterly obsequious before their foremen or bosses, and it is notorious that nearly always they pay for the privilege of getting and keeping a job. This bribery of bosses, as well as the padrone system, proceed from the deep-seated conviction that despotism is the natural social relation, and that therefore they must make terms with the influential superior who is so fortunate as to have favor with the powers that be.

The anthracite coal operators represented such men, prior to joining the union, as disciplined and docile workmen, but in doing so they disregarded the fact that outside the field where they were obsequious they were most violent, treacherous, and factional. Before the organization of the union in the coal fields these foreigners were given over to the most bitter and often murderous feuds among the ten or fifteen nationalities and the two or three factions within each nationality. The Polish worshippers of a given saint would organize a night attack on the Polish worshippers of another saint; the Italians from one province would have a knife for the Italians of another province, and so on. When the union was organized the antagonisms of race, religion, and faction were eliminated. The immigrants came down to an economic basis and turned their forces against their bosses. "We fellows killed this country," said a Polish striker to Father Curran, "and now we are going to make it." The sense of a common cause, and, more than all else, the sense of individual rights as men, have come to these people through the organization of their labor unions, and it could come in no other way, for the union appeals to their necessities, while other forces appeal to their prejudices. They are even yet far from ideal Americans, but those who have hitherto imported them and profited by their immigration should be the last to cry out against the chief influence that has started them on the way to true Americanism.[141]

=Agricultural Distribution of Immigrants.=--The congestion and colonizing of immigrants in the cities and their consequent poverty and the deterioration of the second generation have brought forth various proposals for inducing them to settle upon the farms. The commissioners of immigration[142] at various times have advocated an industrial museum at Ellis Island, wherein the resources and opportunities of the several states could be displayed before the eyes of the incoming thousands.

They and others have gone further and advocated the creation of a bureau of immigrant distribution to help the immigrants out of the crowded cities into the country districts. Still others have urged the establishment of steamship lines to Southern ports and the Gulf of Mexico, so that immigrants may be carried directly to the regions that "need them." Very little can be expected from projects of this kind,[143] for the present contingent of immigrants from Southeastern Europe is too poor in worldly goods and too ignorant of American business to warrant an experiment in the isolation and self-dependence of farming. The farmers of the South and West welcome the settler who has means of purchase, but they distrust the newly arrived immigrant.

Scandinavians and Germans in large numbers find their way to their countrymen on the farms, but the newer nationalities would require the fostering care of government or of wealthy private societies. The Jews have, indeed, taken up the matter, and the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society of New York, by means of subventions from the Baron de Hirsch fund, has distributed many families throughout the country, partly in agriculture, but more generally in trade. The Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants is doing similar work. Great railway systems and land companies in the South and West have their agricultural and industrial agents on the lookout for eligible settlers.

All of the Southern states have established bureaus of immigration, and they are advertising the North and Europe for desirable immigrants. But these agencies seek mainly those immigrants who have resided in the country for a time, and have learned the language and American practices, and, in the case of the railroad and land companies, those who have acc.u.mulated some property.

The immigration bureaus of the Southern states and railways, the most urgent applicants at the present time for immigrants, are strongly opposed to the plan of federal distribution. They want farmers who will do their own work. From the standpoint of the immigrant himself this position is correct. To find a place as an agriculturist he must find a place as a farmer and not a harvest hand.[144] Speaking for the Southern bureaus, Professor Fleming says,[145] "The South decidedly objects to being made the government dumping-ground for undesirable immigrants. It does not want the lower cla.s.s foreigners who have swarmed into the Northern cities. It wants the same sort of people who settled so much of the West." The state board of South Carolina officially invites immigration of "white citizens of the United States, citizens of Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and France, and all other foreigners of Saxon origin."

As for those without money who must depend on their daily labor for wages, they must go where employment is most regular and the best wages are paid. This is not on the farms, with a few months' work in summer and no homes in winter. It is unmistakably in the great cities and industrial centres. The commissioner of immigration at Ellis Island, speaking of the cordon established by his bureau along the Canadian frontier from Halifax to Winnipeg in order to catch those who tried to escape inspection at New York, said, "All those immigrants who had New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, or Cincinnati in mind as a destination when they left Europe and came to Quebec, went all the way around that wall to its western end at Winnipeg, and then took trains and came back to the very places they had in mind when they left Europe; and if you were to land all the ships that now come to New York at Galveston, New Orleans, or Charleston, every one of the immigrants would come to the place he had in mind when he decided to emigrate."[146]

Professor Wilc.o.x contends that the immigrants already distribute themselves according to their economic advantage as completely as do the natives. They seem to congest in the cities because the cities are necessarily their places of first arrival. "Our foreign-born arrive, in at least nine-tenths of the cases, at some city. Our native citizens arrive by birth, in at least three-fourths of the cases, in the country.

The foreign-born arrive mainly at seaport cities, and disperse gradually from those cities to and through other interior cities, ultimately reaching in many cases the small towns or open country. It is in no sense surprising, or an evidence of imperfect distribution, that the foreign-born should be ma.s.sed in the cities when nine-tenths of them arrive there, and the native population ma.s.sed in the country districts when three-fourths of them arrive there."[147] Artificial distribution would not relieve the pressure as long as the character and amount of immigration continue--it can only be relieved by creating greater economic inducements in the country. Natives and foreigners both crowd to the cities because wages and profits are higher than they are in the country.

Even supposing the congestion in the cities could be relieved by making the inducements in the country greater, the relief could not continue, for it would only invite more immigration. Emigration has not relieved the pressure of population in Europe. In no period of their history, with the exception of Ireland, have the populations of Europe increased at a greater rate than during the last half century of migration to America. It is not emigration but improved standards of living that lessens the pressure of numbers, and France with the widest diffusion of property has little emigration and no increase in population. With the redundant millions of Europe, increasing thousands would migrate if they got word from their friends that the American government is finding jobs for them. Just as we have already seen that the tide of immigration rises with a period of prosperity in America, so would it rise with agricultural distribution of immigrants. Both are simply more openings for employment, and the knowledge of such opportunities is promptly carried to the waiting mult.i.tudes abroad.

Consider also the political jeopardy of an administration at Washington conducting a bureau for the distribution of immigrants. If it refused to direct immigrants to one section of the country because it found that the wages were low, it would arouse the hostility of employers. If it directed them to another section, where the wages offered were high because the employers were preparing for a lockout, or the unions were on strike, it would lose the votes of workingmen. The administration would soon learn that safely to conduct such a bureau it must not conduct it at all.

Far better is it that the federal government should leave the distribution of immigrants to private employment agencies. It might then license all such agencies that conduct an interstate business. With the power to take away the license on proof of fraud and misrepresentation, and with the prosecution of agencies and employers that deceive and enslave the immigrant, the government would accomplish all that it could directly do for better distribution. Unquestionably the employment agencies, with their _padroni_, their bankers, and their false promises, are the source of miserable abuse to thousands of immigrants.[148] They require interstate as well as state regulation. By weeding out the dishonest agencies the field would be occupied by the honest ones, and the immigrant could trust himself to their a.s.sistance. But such regulation would not be merely for the sake of the immigrant. It would, as it should, aid the American as well.

This suggests to us the true nature of the problem of city congestion and the nature of its solution. It is not to be found in special efforts on behalf of the immigrant, but in efforts to better the condition of both Americans and immigrants. The congestion of cities is owing to discriminations in favor of cities. If the government gives aid to agriculture as it does to manufactures, if it provides better communication, equalizes taxes, reduces freight rates to the level enjoyed by cities, then agriculture and the small towns will be more attractive. Americans will not crowd to the cities, and the more provident of the immigrants will find their way to the country. The proposition of federal distribution of immigrants is merely a clever illusion kept up to lead Congress astray from the restriction of immigration.

=Higher Standards of Immigration.=--As for the inferior, defective, and undesirable cla.s.ses of immigrants, there is no protection except stringent selection. The Commissioner of Immigration at New York estimates that 200,000 of the million immigrants in 1903 were an injury instead of a benefit to the industries of the country,[149] and he advocates a physical examination and the exclusion of those who fall below a certain physical standard. During the past ten years the educational, or rather, illiteracy test, has come to the front, and the advantages of this test are its simplicity and its specific application to those races whose standards are lowest.

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

Much discussion has been carried on respecting this test, and there has been considerable misunderstanding and misrepresentation as to its probable effects. The princ.i.p.al mistake has been the a.s.sumption that it is designed to take the place of other tests of admission, and that therefore it would permit, for example, the most dangerous criminals--those who are intelligent--to enter this country. If we examine existing laws, and seek to understand the real nature of immigration restriction, we can see the character of this mistake. All of our legislation governing immigration should be described as _improvement_ of immigration rather than _restriction_ of immigration.

The object has always been to raise the average character of those admitted by excluding those who fall below certain standards. And higher standards have been added from time to time as rapidly as the lawmakers perceived the need of bettering the quality of our future citizenship.

Although in 1862 Congress had enacted a law prohibiting the shipment of Chinese coolies in American vessels,[150] it was not until 1875 that the lawmakers first awoke to the evil of unrestricted immigration. In that year a law was enacted to exclude convicts and prost.i.tutes. This law made an exception in favor of those who had been convicted of political offences. Next, in 1882, Congress added lunatics, idiots, paupers, and Chinese. In 1885 laborers under contract were for the first time to be excluded, but an exception was made in order to admit actors, artists, lecturers, singers, domestics, and skilled workmen for new industries.

In 1891 the list of ineligibles was again extended so as to shut out not only convicts but persons convicted of crime, also "a.s.sisted"

immigrants, polygamists, and persons with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases. In 1903 the law added epileptics, persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity, professional beggars, and anarchists. Notwithstanding these successive additions of excluded cla.s.ses, the number of immigrants has continually increased until it is greater to-day than in any preceding period, and while the standards have been raised in one direction, the average quality has been lowered in other directions. The educational and physical tests, while not needed for the races from Northwestern Europe, are now advocated as additions to the existing tests on account of the flood of races from Southeastern Europe.

The question of "poor physique" has come seriously to the front in recent reports of immigration officials. The decline in the average of physical make-up to which they call attention accompanies the increase in numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans. While the commissioner at Ellis Island estimates that 200,000 immigrants are below the physical standards that should be required to ent.i.tle them to admission, the number certified by the surgeons is much less than this. Yet nine-tenths of even that smaller number are admitted, since the law excludes them only if other grounds of exclusion appear. That the physical test is practicable is shown by the following description of the qualities taken into account by the medical examiners at the immigrant stations; qualities which would be made even more definite if they were authorized to be acted upon:[151]--

"A certificate of this nature implies that the alien concerned is afflicted with a body not only but illy adapted to the work necessary to earn his bread, but also but poorly able to withstand the onslaught of disease. It means that he is undersized, poorly developed, with feeble heart action, arteries below the standard size; that he is physically degenerate, and as such not only unlikely to become a desirable citizen, but also very likely to transmit his undesirable qualities to his offspring should he, unfortunately for the country in which he is domiciled, have any.

"Of all causes for rejection, outside of those for dangerous, contagious, or loathsome diseases, or for mental disease, that of 'poor physique' should receive the most weight, for in admitting such aliens not only do we increase the number of public charges by their inability to gain their bread through their physical inapt.i.tude and their low resistance to disease, but we admit likewise progenitors to this country whose offspring will reproduce, often in an exaggerated degree, the physical degeneracy of their parents."

The history of the illiteracy test in Congress is a curious comment on lobbying. First introduced in 1895, it pa.s.sed the House by a vote of 195 to 26, and the Senate in another form by a vote of 52 to 10. Referred to a conference committee, an identical bill again pa.s.sed both Houses by reduced majorities. But irrelevant amendments had been tacked on and the President vetoed it. The House pa.s.sed it over his veto by 193 to 37, but it was too late in the session to reach a vote in the Senate. Introduced again in 1898, it pa.s.sed the Senate by 45 to 28, but pressure of the Spanish War prevented a vote in the House. The bill came up in subsequent Congresses but did not reach a vote.[152] The lobby is directed by the steamship companies, supported by railway companies, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' a.s.sociation, and other great employers of labor. By misrepresentation, these interested agencies have been able at times to arouse the fears of the older races of immigrants not affected by the measure. Their fears were groundless, for the illiteracy test is not a test of the English language, but a test of any language, and it applies only to those who are 15 years of age and over, but does not apply to wife, children, parents, or grandparents of those who are admitted. With these reasonable limitations it would exclude only 1 in 200 of the Scandinavians, 1 in 100 of the English, Scotch, and Finns, 2 or 3 in 100 of the Germans, Irish, Welsh, and French; but it would exclude one-half of the South Italians, one-seventh of the North Italians, one-third to two-fifths of the several Slav races, one-seventh of the Russian Jews, altogether one-fifth or one-fourth of the total immigration.[153] But these proportions would not long continue.

Elementary education is making progress in Eastern and Southern Europe, and a test of this kind would stimulate it still more among the peasants. Restrictive at first, it is only selective; it would not permanently reduce the number of immigrants, but would raise their level of intelligence and their ability to take care of themselves.

The foregoing principles do not apply to Chinese immigration. There the law is strictly one of exclusion and not selection. This distinction is often overlooked in the discussion of the subject. Respecting European, j.a.panese, and Korean immigration, the law _admits_ all except certain cla.s.ses definitely described, such as paupers, criminals, and so on.

Respecting Chinese immigration the law _excludes_ all except certain cla.s.ses described, such as teachers, merchants, travellers, and students. In the case of European immigration the burden of proof is upon the immigration authorities to show that the immigrant should be excluded. In the case of the Chinese, the burden of proof is on the immigrant to show that he should be admitted. In the administration of the law the difference is fundamental. If the Chinese law is liberalized so as to admit doctors, lawyers, and other professional cla.s.ses, against whom there is no objection, it can be done in one of two ways.

It can name and specify the additional cla.s.ses to be admitted. To this there is little objection, for it retains the existing spirit of the law. Or it can be reversed, and can admit all cla.s.ses of Chinese except coolies, laborers, and the cla.s.ses now excluded by other laws. If this were done, the enforcement of the law would break down, for the burden of proof would be lifted from the immigrant and placed on the examining board. The law is with great difficulty enforced as it is, but the evasions bear no comparison in number with those practised under the other law. European immigration is encouraged, provided it pa.s.ses a minimum standard. Chinese immigration is prohibited unless it exceeds a maximum standard. One is selection, the other is exclusion. One should be amended by describing new cla.s.ses _not_ to be admitted, the other by describing cla.s.ses which _may_ be admitted.

This difference between the two laws may be seen in the effects of the restrictions which have from time to time been added to the immigration laws. Each additional ground of restriction or selection has not decreased the total amount of immigration, nor has it increased the proportion of those debarred from admission. In 1898, 3200 aliens were sent back, and this was 1.4 per cent of those who arrived. In 1901, 3900 were sent back, but this was only three-fourths of 1 per cent of those arriving. In 1906, 13,000 sent back were 1.2 per cent of the arrivals.

Intending immigrants as well as steamship companies learn the standards of exclusion and the methods of evasion, so that the proportion who take their chances and fail in the attempt is very small. Nevertheless, this deportation of immigrants, though averaging less than 1 per cent, is a hardship that should be avoided. It has often been proposed that this should be done through examination abroad by American consuls or by agents of the Immigration Bureau. Attractive and humane as this proposal appears, the foreign examination could not be made final. It would remove the examiners from effective control, and would require a large additional force as well as the existing establishment to deport those who might evade the foreign inspection. It does not strike at the root of the evil, which is the business energy of the steamship companies in soliciting immigration, and their business caution in requiring doubtful immigrants to give bonds in advance to cover the cost of carrying them back.[154] It is not the exclusion law that causes hardship, but the steamship companies that connive at evasions of the law. The law of 1903 for the first time adopted the correct principle to meet this evasion, but with a limited application. Since 1898, the Bureau had debarred increasing numbers on account of loathsome and contagious diseases. But these had already done the injury which their deportation was designed to prevent. In the crowded steerage the entire shipload was exposed to this contagion. Congress then enacted the law of 1903, not only requiring the steamship companies to carry them back, as before, but requiring the companies to pay a fine of $100 for every alien debarred on that account. In 1906, the companies paid fines of $24,300 on 243 such deportations. The principle should be extended to all cla.s.ses excluded by law, and the fine should be raised to $500. Then every agent of the steamship companies in the remotest hamlets of Europe would be an immigration inspector. Their surgeons and officials already know the law and its standards of administration as thoroughly as the immigration officials. It only needs an adequate motive to make them cooperators with the Bureau instead of evaders of the law. Already the law of 1903 has partly had that effect. One steamship company has arranged with the Bureau to locate medical officers at its foreign ports of embarkation.

However, the penalty is not yet heavy enough, and the Commissioner-General recommends its increase to $500. By extending the law to all grounds of deportation in addition to contagious diseases, the true source of hardship to debarred aliens will be dried up.[155]

INDEX

A

Advertising, 26, 29, 84, 85, 104, 108, 109.

Age Composition of Immigrants, 119.

Agriculture, 130, 131, 132, 133.

Alien Contract Labor Law, 118.

American Federation of Labor, 144.

Americanization, 208.

Armenians, 65, 99.

Asiatic Immigration, 101-104.

a.s.similation, 17-21, 113, 198.

Atlanta University, 58, 59, 61.

Australia, 6, 19.

Austria-Hungary, 18, 65, 79-87.

B

Births, 57, 86, 94.

Bohemians, 80, 82, 132.

Boston, 203, 215.