CHAPTER XVII

THE NEW PROBLEM OF IMMIGRATION

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:

1850 10,715 1860 15,157 1870 16,875 1880 15,365 1890 17,314 1900 15,886 1910 17,227

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:

1791–1800 100,000 1801–1810 100,000 1811–1820 98,385 1821–1830 143,439 1831–1840 599,125 1841–1850 1,713,251 1851–1860 2,511,060 1861–1870 2,377,279 1871–1880 2,812,191 1881–1890 5,246,613 1891–1900 3,687,564 1900–1910 8,795,386

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:

1800 8.278 1810 19.998 1820 20.927 1830 14.355 1840 3.437 1850 1.739 1860 1.205 1870 1.273 1880 1.076 1890 .570 1900 .824 1910 .347

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 (