^ STUDY IN IMMMATIOtf
MARY CLARK BARNES
*4AO>
LEMUEL CALL BARNES
GIFT
OF
THE NEW AMERICA
A STUDY IN IMMIGRATION
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Under Our Flag-
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The Call of the Waters
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From Darkness to Light
By Mary Helm
Conservation of National Ideals
A Symposium
M or monism, The Islam of America
By Bruce Kinney, D.D.
The New America
By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. L. C. Barnes
oUpplcmcntiry
America, God's Melting-Pot
By Laura Gerould Craig
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Comrades from Other Lands
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Issued under the direction of the Council of
Women for Home Missions
THE NEW AMERICA
A STUDY IN IMMIGRATION
CHAPTERS I TO IV
BY
MARY CLARK BARNES
I
CHAPTERS V AND VI
BY
LEMUEL CALL BARNES
ILLUSTRATED
NEW Your CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1913, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
By MARY CLARK BARNES
Early Stories and Songs for New Students of
English. Illustrated, i6mo, cloth, net .60.
Paper, net .35.
Through the medium of these stories and
songs, teachers knowing only English have
given to pupils of different nationalities the
ability to speak, read and write the English re
quired for practical use.
Dr. Edward A. Steiner says: "Not only
practical, but it affords easy transition to the
higher things."
By LEMUEL C. BARNES, D.D.
Elemental Forces in Home Missions. I2mo,
cloth, net .75.
As the author of that popular missionary
text-book, "Two Thousand Years of Missions
before Carey," and as the long-time Secretary
of one of the largest Home Missionary organi
zations in this country, Dr. Barnes commands
a hearing from the religious world. Some of
the most important issues connected with the
work of Christianizing America are presented
with breadth, clearness, force and conviction.
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
Co
The Strangers within Our Gates
371489
CONTENTS
I. BEGINNINGS 15
The immigration problem as old as the New America
— Phases of the problem manifested in development of
original colonies — Virginia cavaliers — Plymouth Pil
grims — Massachusetts Bay Puritans — Connecticut —
Educational problems— Development of religious lib
erty — Dutch and English in New York — Delaware —
Pennsylvania — New Jersey — Maryland — The Caro-
linas— Georgia — The Revolutionary Ideal.
II. DEVELOPMENT 39
Expression of nation's intellectual power — Inventions
— Explorations — Acquisition of new territory— Im
migration attracted by industrial opportunities —
— Sources and character of immigration — Assisted im
migration — Illiteracy — Changing conditions in Ger
many—Conditions affecting Scandinavian immigra
tion — Diversion of British emigration to British colo
nies — Forced immigration from Africa — Its cost in
" irrepressible conflict " — The Civil War a test of pre
ceding immigration — Immigration following the Civil
War.
III. ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS . . 61
The " New Immigration " — Dominant racial factors —
Italians — Slavs — Russian Jews— Russian Christians
— Austria-Hungary — Slovaks — Magyars — Other races
of Austria-Hungary — Polish immigration — Bohemians
— Balkans — Does America need the "New Immigra
tion " ?
IV. TENDENCIES 83
Control of immigration — Tests of admission — Average
age of admitted immigrants — Findings of the Immi
gration Commission concerning alcoholism — Insanity
— Pauperism — Sanitary conditions in dwellings — Agri
cultural pursuits— Wage earning — Criminality — Juve
nile delinquency — Majority of " New Immigration"
CONTENTS
unacquainted with source of American ideals — Testi
mony of Professor John R. Green — Responsibility of
Christian patriots.
V. ASIATIC INFLUENCES 103
All continents contribute to stream of life in America
— Asia gave us our Bible and our Saviour — Growing
influence of Jews— Syrian, Armenian and other con
tingents from Western Asia — From Eastern Asia,
Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and East Indians — Reli
gions of Eastern Asia winning many Americans — Our
influence on Asia by our treatment of Asiatics in
America and by direct missions to them, local, denom
inational and inter-denominational — Hundreds of
students as well as laborers — Asiatics within our
gates the greatest challenge of human history.
VI. GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES . . .129
State agencies for selection, distribution, naturaliza
tion, education and protection of immigrants — Society
agencies classified as general and racial — " Homes" —
Labor Unions — Young People's Associations— Social
Settlements — Church agencies, inter-denominational
(six named), denominational, carefully analyzed and
summarized, and local church with institutional,
branch and individual work — Imperial possibilities of
the future.
APPENDIX *
ILLUSTRATIONS
Landing at Ellis Island .... Frontispiece
Finnish Family 42
Rumanian Shepherds 58
The Worker 71
[>reek Bride and Bridegroom 79
Chinese Children's Choir no
I
BEGINNINGS
Every other civilization of which we have any knowledge is
so much older than that of America that we can take much for
granted. But with America it is different. The why and the
wherefore is the constant question; the meaning of it all can
only be understood by an intimate knowledge of the funda
mental. . . .
In America man stands face to face with a civilization in the
making.— A. MAURICE Low.
I incline to think that the future of America is of greater
importance to Christendom at large than that of any other
country. — WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.
BEGINNINGS
THE New America began with the permanent
settlement of the English at Jamestown in
May, 1607. Their coming brought a serious
immigration problem to native Americans.
For more than a century the vision of a " New
World " had fascinated European minds and had led
many an expedition across the sea in search of a shorter
passage to the riches of India, or in hope of finding
even greater riches in the precious metals of America.
Gold was the lure, not only of Spanish adventurers, but
no less of English noblemen and merchants in suc
cessive excursions to these shores in the sixteenth
century.
The first colonial charter granted to Englishmen for
purposes of settlement in the " New World " was
conditioned on " homage and rent." The tract of
land so granted was known as Virginia and included
twelve degrees on the American coast, extending from
Cape Fear to Halifax. The stipulated " rent " was
one-fifth of the net produce of gold and silver and one-
fifteenth of the copper.
Gradually the golden mirage enveloping the New
World faded in the clear light of experience, and the
New America emerged as a place of ample returns for
15
16 THE NSW AMERICA
the itiyestnicnt; of •: persevering labor and a place of
refuge for the oppressed and the poor.
Each of our original thirteen colonies had its own
phase of the " Immigration Problem " to solve. In
some cases the phase of that " Problem " which was
committed to a colony baffled solution and led to delay
in the making of the New America.
VIRGINIA
A notable instance was that of the attempt to colo
nize Virginia in 1606 under a patent granted by King
James I. The immigrants, one hundred and five in
number, included twelve laborers and " a very few
mechanics." There were forty-eight " gentlemen " to
four carpenters. There were no men with families.
This company of men was commissioned to form
a permanent American colony which was to be " the
chosen abode of liberty." The code of laws by which
they were to be governed was framed by the King of
England. Religion was " established " according to
the doctrine and rites of the Church of England, and
dissent was forbidden. Tumults and seditions were
punishable by death. Legislative authority over the
colony in affairs, great and small, was the prerogative
of the English king, only.
It may have been due to the disparity in numbers
of " gentlemen " and carpenters and other workmen in
the wilderness colony that within six months many
died of privation and suffering, and those who re
mained reported of their experiences, " Our lodgings
were castles in the air; had we been as free from all
BEGINNINGS 17
sins as from gluttony and, drunkenness, we might have
been canonized for saints/'
The coming of one hundred and twenty new immi
grants with fresh supplies from England brought a
return of hope to the suffering colonists until it was
found that the newcomers were " chiefly vagabond
gentlemen," and goldsmiths, intent on digging gold
from the earth rather than on industriously building
that " chosen abode of Liberty " which had been their
original aim.
After the coming of a third company of immigrants,
John Smith, then president of the council, wrote to
the promoters of the enterprise in England, " I entreat
you rather send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen,
gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and dig-
gers-up of trees' roots, well provided, than a thousand
of such as we have."
In 1609, after the ships had gone and the colony
was left to face its problem afresh, President Smith
required industry of all. " He who would not work
might not eat." So it came about that " gentlemen "
became " accomplished wood-cutters." In the follow
ing spring thirty or forty acres of ground were
" digged and planted," the culture of Indian corn being
taught by two savages.
Slowly but surely the lesson of industry was learned
by the survivors of the company commissioned to found
the " chosen abode of liberty " in the New America.
The problem of the creation of a free commonwealth
by immigrants to whom all freedom was denied by
their rulers on the other side of the sea was finally
rejected as insoluble.
18 THE NEW AMERICA
* * * •* •* "* *•,*'**' > * »
In May, -1609, :"*he immigration problem" was
again submitted to Virginia under a second charter
involving new conditions. The powers which had been
held by the king were transferred to the company in
England. The colonization of the land was entrusted
to " a very numerous and opulent and influential body
of adventurers, representing the nobility and gentry,
the army and the bar, the industry and the trade of
England." Lord Delaware was made governor and
captain-general for life.
More than five hundred immigrants left Eng
land at the first sailing to work out the solution of
" the immigration problem " in Virginia under this
new charter. Within a year of their landing the
whole number of colonists, including these new ar
rivals, was sixty — " reduced to that number," says the
record, " by indolence, vice and famine."
In 1619 a new solution was attempted. Kings, par
liaments, privileged companies, titled noblemen, all
had failed. As a last resort the colonists were to
attempt the management of their own affairs. On the
thirtieth day of July delegates from the eleven planta
tions of Virginia met at Jamestown for their first
Assembly. The session was opened with prayer.
Then the Assembly proceeded to investigate and pass
upon the proper election of its members in a manner
quite modern.
The Church of England was confirmed as the church
of Virginia. The salaries of ministers were fixed and
it was enacted that " all persons whatsoever, on Sab
bath days, must frequent divine service and sermons
both forenoon and afternoon." Grants of land were
BEGINNINGS 19
asked not only for planters, but for planters' wives,
also, " because in a new plantation, it is not known
whether man or woman be the most necessary."
Taxes were voted on " excess in apparel." Penal
ties for idleness were appointed, and for drunkenness,
and for gaming with dice or cards. Encouragement
was offered for the cultivation of corn, mulberry-trees,
hemp and vines. Measures were adopted " towards
the erection of a university and college," and for " the
education of Indian boys who might work for the con
version of their people to the Christian religion."
Whatever opinion may be held concerning any par
ticular enactment of this " first elective body that ever
assembled in the western world," its records are of
perpetual value as indicating the judgment of the
colonists as to their own needs.
In view of current discussion of the different mo
tives actuating the " new immigration " in comparison
with the " old," it is to be noted that economic con
siderations dominated the early settlement of Vir
ginia. Neither the social order, ecclesiastical regula
tions nor political forms of England were repugnant
to these early immigrants. They came quite frankly
for the purpose of bettering their material condition,
as well as for the enlargement of the domain of Eng
land and in the hope of " wynning the savages to the
Christian faith."
The Anglican church remained the established
church of the colony for about a century. In general,
the social ideal of the colonists was a reproduction
of the life of England of their time. A landed aristoc
racy was promoted by the provision that a planter
20 THE NEW AMERICA
might claim fifty additional acres of land for every
person whom he would transport into Virginia at his
own cost. The lack of popular education made it diffi
cult to bridge the gulf between classes.
THE PILGRIMS OF NEW ENGLAND
Out of the same England and nearly at the same
period as the permanent settlers of Virginia, came the
colonists of New England, but with a totally different
immigration problem. They yielded to none in love
for Old England and in loyalty to her sovereign, but
they found themselves at variance with her restrictions,
both civil and ecclesiastical.
The Reformation, whose influence had affected all
Europe, had touched England. But in bringing relief
from the dominion of the Pope of Rome it had not
been able to free the people from the despotic rule of
the King of England. Henry VIII. became " pope in
his own dominions." In 1539, through his influence,
a statute was enacted " abolishing diversity of opin
ions." Death was decreed equally for denying the
king's supremacy and for doubting his creed.
Those who held strong convictions of the need of
reform within the established church and against the
exercise of civil power in the domain of religion gained
the title of Puritans, given in derision by those who
were content with the existing order and who resented
any suggestion of change.
Queen Elizabeth's " Commission for Causes Ec
clesiastical," appointed to search out " heretical opin
ions, seditious books, absences from divine worship
BEGINNINGS 21
established by law, errors, heresies and schisms," and
to deal severely with all found guilty, relighted the
fires of persecution.
In 1608 a company of Independents in the north
of England, having chosen John Robinson and Wil
liam Brewster, — both Cambridge men, — their pastor
and ruling elder, emigrated to Holland, " where they
heard was freedom of religion for all men." After a
year in Amsterdam, recognizing themselves as pilgrims,
they moved on to Leyden. But they preferred to live,
if possible, under the government of their native land.
They began to consider " the most northern parts of
Virginia " as a region where they might " live in a dis
tinct body by themselves."
Taking counsel together, they agreed that " It is not
with us as with men whom small things can discourage.
The people are industrious and frugal. We are knit
together as a body in a most sacred covenant of the
Lord, of the violation whereof we make great con
science, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves
straitly tied to all care of each other's good and of
the whole."
They succeeded in forming a partnership between
their Leyden employers and some business men in Lon
don with the arrangement that the services of each
emigrant should be rated as a capital of ten pounds,
and should belong to the company. No division of
profits was to be made for seven years.
The Pilgrims gladly entered into this engagement
which bound them for a seven years' term in material
things, since it left them free in regard to civic rights
and religious liberty. This first colony of New Eng-
22 THE NEW AMERICA
land, consisting of forty-one men with their families,
with no warrant from the sovereign of England or of
any other nation, with no available charter from any
corporate body, after a stormy voyage of more than
sixty days, landed at Plymouth, December 21, 1620.
The new commonwealth, when it landed from the
sea, had an organized church and a system of civil gov
ernment. Hardships were many through the long
New England winter, but when the Mayflower
sailed for England in the following April not one of
the immigrants sailed with her. The " Colony of Con
science " had come to stay and to work out a destiny
for itself and for the New America which was in the
making. Retreat was no part of its programme.
Without a charter, they established self-government
whose stability depended on their own character and
aims. The twelve years which they had spent as im
migrants in Holland had given them an acquaintance
with the spirit and forms of republican government,
a conception of education, of religion and of life, which
had not been offered them in monarchical England of
their time.
PURITANS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY
In 1628 the Massachusetts Bay Company sent over
from England a number of Puritan colonists, includ
ing John Endicott as governor, with his wife and
family. They united with other Puritan settlers in
the region of Boston harbor and founded the first
town of their colony at Salem, which had been chosen
by the Company in England as " a convenient place
BEGINNINGS 23
of refuge for the exiles of religion." The Company
had commanded, "If any of the salvages pretend right
of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted
in our patent, to endeavor to purchase their title, that
we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion," and
further, to " particularly publish that no wrong or
injury be offered to the natives." Thus did Puritans in
England co-operate with Puritans in New England in
laying foundations for the New America.
The new colony, having survived its initial hard
ships and privations, was subjected to the severer test
of popularity. In their prosperity, intent on their mis
sion as " a religious plantation and not a plantation
for trade," they sharpened the severity of their laws
against infidelity and " sectarianism."
CONNECTICUT
The beginnings of Connecticut were made by a group
of people under the leadership of their pastor — Thomas
Hooker — who emigrated from Massachusetts and, in
1639, adopted a constitution guaranteeing the liberties
of the people and creating an independent republic.
Mr. A. Maurice Low, in " The American People,"
characterizes this as " the only written constitution then
in existence that organized a form of civil govern
ment," and as "the prototype of the Constitution of
the United States."
The constructive work of the ministers of colonial
days in shaping civic affairs is worthy of note. Three
colonies, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Haven,
owed their origin to three ministers, — Roger Williams,
24 THE NEW AMERICA
Thomas Hooker and John Davenport. They, with the
Pilgrim colony of Plymouth, stood for larger liberty,
both civic and religious, than could be found in the
other colonies at the time of their organization.
EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS
The fact that it was their independent thinking which
had led them to leave their native land was allied
with the fact that education had a prominent place in
the development of the New England colonies. As
early as 1624, Governor Bradford, noting the fact
that families were teaching their own children as yet
because of the lack of a common school, added that " it
is not because the need of education is not realized."
Early provision was made for public schools in all
the towns of Massachusetts. In 1647 a ^aw was passed
providing that every township of fifty householders
should have a public school for its children. By 1665
every town had a common school and every town con
taining more than one hundred inhabitants had a gram
mar school. As early as 1636 the colonial legislature
founded in New Town (Cambridge) the college which
was named Harvard two years later.
In Connecticut every town that did not keep a school
for at least three months in the year was liable to be
fined.
Perhaps no other characteristic of the Virginia
colony indicates so marked a contrast to the ideals of
the New Englanders as the attitude toward popular
education. As late as 1671, Sir William Berkeley, who
had been made governor in 1641, thanked God that
BEGINNINGS 25
" there are no free schools nor printing and I hope we
shall not have them this hundred years; for learning has
brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the
world, and printing has divulged them, and libels
against the best government. God keep us from both."
Would it be possible from types of thinking so
opposite to evolve a common ideal strong enough to
fuse all elements in the creation of a national life?
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Among those who emigrated from England in 1631
to escape the persecutions of Archbishop Laud, was
Roger Williams, a graduate of Cambridge, whose
advanced views concerning freedom of conscience and
whose advocacy of the separation of church and state,
had made him particularly obnoxious to the authori
ties.
In Massachusetts, finding that the magistrate re
quired the presence of every man at the public worship
of the church, he insisted that " no one should be
bound to worship or to maintain worship against his
own consent," and declared that " the doctrine of per
secution for cause of conscience is most lamentably con
trary to the doctrine of Jesus Christ." He became
assistant minister at Salem but soon found himself too
far from harmony with the ruling powers to be useful
there. Later he was assistant minister in the Pilgrim
church of Plymouth. In 1633 he became pastor of the
Salem church, but was banished by order of the General
Court in 1635 because of his persistence in teaching
that " the power of the civil magistrate extends only to
26 THE NEW AMERICA
the bodies, goods and the outward estates of men, and
not to the souls and consciences."
In mid-winter he went to the shores of Narragansett
Bay, where he purchased land of the Indian chiefs,
and founded the colony of Rhode Island, with its basis
of civil and religious liberty. In regular session of its
Assembly in May, 1664, the colony enacted that " No
person shall at any time hereafter be any ways called
in question for any difference of opinion in matters of
religion."
NEW YORK
New York, having originated as a trading-post under
the auspices of the Dutch West India Company, was
the abode of merchants from the first, and a meeting-
place for representatives of many nationalities and
many creeds. We are told that " twenty years after
Hudson had discovered Manhattan, fourteen languages
were spoken in its streets."
In March, 1627, the colony on Manhattan sent a
letter to the Plymouth Colony, claiming " mutual good
will and service," reminding the Plymouth colonists of
" the nearness of our native countries, the friendship
of our forefathers, and the new covenant between the
States General and England against the Spaniards."
Governor Bradford replied, " Our children after us
never shall forget the good and courteous entreaty
which we found in your country, and shall desire your
prosperity forever."
The government of New Netherland had published
the desire that the population should include " farm
ers and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to
BEGINNINGS 27
toil and penury." Free passage from the Old World
was offered to mechanics.
At first citizenship was a commercial privilege, not
a political enfranchisement. Puritans of Connecticut
established whole towns, planting their New England
liberties in their congregational way, in the territory
claimed by the Dutch West India Company, and met
no protest from the agents of the liberal-policied Com
pany. Dutch citizens, watching the experiment, began
to grow restless, then to ask for the larger liberties of
citizenship.
Out of the general unrest came the meeting of an
assembly in 1653, composed of two deputies from
each village in New Netherland, and claiming the
right of deliberating on the civil condition of the
country. The petition of the assembly, drafted by
George Baxter, recited that, " We who have come
together from a various lineage, we who have, at our
own expense, exchanged our native lands for the pro
tection of the United Provinces, we who have trans
formed the wilderness into fruitful farms, — demand
that no new laws shall be enacted but with consent of
the people; that none shall be appointed to office but
with the approbation of the people; that obscure and
obsolete laws shall never be revived."
" Will you set your names to the visionary notions of
an Englishman ? " demanded Governor Stuyvesant.
" Is there no one of the Netherlands nation able to
draft your petition? And your prayer is so extrava
gant! You might as well claim to send delegates to
the assembly of their High Mightinesses themselves!
The old laws remain in force. Directors will never
28 THE NEW AMERICA
make themselves responsible to subjects." He com
manded the members of the assembly to separate, " on
pains of arbitrary punishment," giving them as his
ultimatum, " We derive our authority from God and
the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a
few ignorant subjects."
The West India Company, being appealed to, de
clared the resistance of the colonists to arbitrary taxa
tion to be " contrary to the maxims of every enlight
ened government." The colonists were exhorted to
" no longer indulge the visionary dream that taxes
can be imposed only with their consent."
Lacking freedom as men, the colonists lacked public
spirit. It was difficult to secure men to go to the relief
of neighboring villages when attacked by the Indians.
As the Company claimed absolute sovereignty, the
people claimed from the Company absolute protection.
The Company, valuing the colony as property, con
sidered how far expenditure might be justified on
business principles.
When rumor came of an intended invasion from
England in 1664, a new assembly was held, larger than
before. When the English fleet appeared off the coast
of Manhattan, the people surrendered, receiving guar
antees of security to the customs, the religion, the
municipal institutions, and the possessions of the
Dutch. Manhattan became New York, with power
vested in the people to choose their own magistrates,
to elect their own deputies and to have a free choice in
all public affairs.
BEGINNINGS 29
DELAWARE
Within the limits of the present state of Delaware
settlement was made by the Dutch as early as 1631.
Swedes and Finns came in 1638. They erected " Chris
tiana Fort, and named the territory New Sweden."
In 1664, soon after the English conquest of Manhattan,
the colonists on the Delaware capitulated, allowing
England to complete her possession of the Atlantic
coast territory of the thirteen original states.
PROBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION
Immigration problems of the colonial period were
complicated not only by the relations of the colonists
with the proprietors but by their relations with each
other. All boundaries were in dispute, owing to
imperfect knowledge of the geography of the coun
try.
In 1643, m order to provide for their common secu
rity and welfare, the colonies of Massachusetts, Ply
mouth, Connecticut and New Haven, united to form
the United Colonies of New England, each retaining
the management of its own affairs while all matters
relating to the general good were referred to commis
sioners, — two from each colony. From 1652 to 1820
the history of Maine is merged in that of Massachu
setts. The relations of Massachusetts and New Hamp
shire varied until 1741, when the final separation was
made. The New England colonies claimed western
boundaries which overlapped the territory claimed by
the Dutch West India Company and its colony of New
30 THE NEW AMERICA
Netherland. The territory which now is Vermont
was claimed not only by New England but by New
Netherland and by France. Charter governments,
proprietary governments, royal governments, became
entangled with each other, to the greater confusion of
the immigration problems of all.
Governor Stuyvesant, of New Netherland, finding
what he considered encroachments being made on
every side, went to Boston and entered complaint to
the convention of the United Colonies of New England.
His statement of unjust encroachments met a neutral
attitude on the part of Massachusetts, and a demand
for delay by Connecticut. Baffled in Boston, the re
monstrance was carried by an embassy to Hartford.
When Governor Stuyvesant asserted his right to terri
tory purchased from the natives, the commissioners
replied that Connecticut, by its charter, extended from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. " Where, then, is New
Netherland ? " asked the Dutch protesters. " We do
not know," replied the agents of Connecticut.
PENNSYLVANIA NEW JERSEY
When William Penn had received from the Eng
lish government a charter for the land which came to
be known as Pennsylvania, he issued to the settlers
who had immigrated to that territory a proclamation
containing these words, " You shall be governed by
laws of your own making, and live a free, and if you
will, a sober and industrious people. I beseech God to
direct you in the way of righteousness, and therein
BEGINNINGS 31
prosper you and your children after you. I am your
true friend, WM. PENN."
He addressed a letter to the natives of the Penn
sylvania forests, declaring himself and them " respon
sible to one and the same God, having the same law
written in our hearts, and alike bound to love and help
and do good to one another."
The Quaker proprietors in England wrote to the few
immigrants in New Jersey, " We lay a foundation for
after ages to understand their liberty as Christians and
as men, that they may not be brought into bondage but
by their own consent; for we put the power in the
people."
MARYLAND
The experience of Lord Baltimore illustrates the
different characteristics of adjacent colonies in the
New America. He visited Virginia in 1629, bringing
his family with him, but was refused as a settler on the
ground of being a " papist." Greatly to the dissatis
faction of the colonists he secured from the King of
England a grant of the territory of Maryland, which
they had considered their own province, and widely
advertised toleration of all forms of religion in the
new colony, although Quakers were fined and im
prisoned on refusal to take an oath, or to perform
military service.
THE CAROLINAS
The permanent settlement of Carolina was closely
connected with the restoration of Charles II. to the
S2 THE NEW AMERICA
throne of England. During the English Revolution
the sympathies of the majority of the colonists of Vir
ginia had been with the royalist party as strongly as
those of the majority in New England had been with
Cromwell. On the restoration of the monarchy the
aristocratic party in Virginia led in organizing a royal
ist assembly, allying it with the English crown, and
thus sweeping away the progress that had been made
in self-government.
Those members of the colony who were out of sym
pathy with this retracing of the footsteps of the past,
found the freedom from conventions, both political and
religious, in the forests south of Virginia congenial
to them, and Carolina gained an element of the popu
lation which Virginia lost.
In 1633 Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, was com
missioned to institute a government over the people of
the Carolina region. Without disputing their posses
sion of lands which they had acquired in part from
the Indians, and without discussing political principles
with them, he appointed William Drummond, an im
migrant from Scotland, as their governor.
Men from the colony of English wealth, nobility
and ecclesiasticism, were met there by men from New
England, the colony of democracy and non-conformity,
who claimed the privileges of self-government as a
natural right. The overflow from these two colonies,
founded on opposite principles, combined to secure
greater liberty than had been granted to either of the
parent colonies.
In 1669 a few laws were framed to fit the local
needs and, simple as they were, they remained in force
BEGINNINGS 33
half a century. New settlers were exempted from
taxation for a year. Every one joining the colony
received a bounty in land, but a perfect title was given
only after a residence of two years. When a constitu
tion was forwarded by " the proprietors in England,"
in 1671, it was promptly rejected by the people, who,
intent on solving their own problems, felt no need of
outside help.
In 1663 the territory of South Carolina was granted
by Charles II. to eight " Lords Proprietors," with
authority to legislate " by and with the advice, assent
and approbation of the freemen " and " to grant re
ligious freedom."
The proprietors furnished free transportation for
immigrants, and established their own agent in the
colony to manage all commercial transactions. Soon
after landing, the colonists took affairs into their own
hands, somewhat after the manner of their neighbors
on the north, and instituted representative government
for themselves, electing five representatives to act with
the five chosen by the proprietors.
Religious liberty attracted dissenters from many
parts of Europe to South Carolina. From England
came, also, " impoverished members of the Church of
England." Scotchmen and Scotch-Irish came, at
tracted by the fertility of the soil and by the prospect of
peace denied them in their native land during the
tyranny of Lauderdale.
King Charles II. provided at his own expense two
small vessels to bring to Carolina " a few foreign
Protestants, who might there domesticate the produc
tions of the south of Europe."
34. THE NEW AMERICA
Of the 500,000 Huguenots who escaped from France
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many
reached America and a large proportion of those who
came found homes in South Carolina.
In this freedom-loving colony there came a time of
confusion between the will of the " Lords Proprietors "
and the people who refused to recognize their authority.
Finally, in 1690, a meeting of representatives of the
colony disfranchised the governor, James Colleton, and
banished him from the province. So South Carolina
felt and fought her way to independence fifty years
after Connecticut had become an independent common
wealth.
GEORGIA
Georgia, youngest of the colonies, was founded in
1732 by James Oglethorpe, as a place in which the
unfortunate, especially those who had been imprisoned
in England for debt, might gain a new start in life.
By its charter the colony was placed for twenty-one
years under the guardianship of a corporation, " in
trust for the poor." The institution of courts and all
executive and legislative power were given exclusively
to the trustees for this length of time. Parliament
made a grant of £10,000 to be used in the establish
ment of the colony. Through private subscriptions
botanists were sent to South America and the West
Indies to find and bring to Georgia the plants best
adapted to its soil.
No colony ever was started with better intentions or
treated with greater generosity, — except in the matter
of placing on the colonists themselves responsibility for
BEGINNINGS 35
their own welfare. Those who accepted the opportuni
ties which it offered included not only English, but
Swiss, German, Scotch and Hebrew immigrants.
Though generously aided, the colony did not prosper
under the rule of the incorporators, who surrendered
their charter before the end of the specified twenty-
one years. But in 1768, after fourteen years of find
ing and making its own way to prosperity, we find
Georgia reported as " the most flourishing colony on
the continent."
THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAL
What the Dutch West India Company in 1654
had characterized as " the visionary dream that taxes
can be imposed only with the consent "of the taxed,
was not dispelled by the exhortation of " Their High
Mightinesses." It became a part of the inspiring ideal
of resolute freemen and found voice after more than a
century of waiting, in the Declaration of Independence.
That, too, was counted a visionary dream by many
a High Mightiness of the Old World. Were less than
four millions of people, — immigrants from the four
quarters of the earth, speaking different languages, ad
hering to differing creeds, — capable of amalgamation
for effective service in resisting foreign domination ? —
capable of that more complete amalgamation which is
essential to the creation and maintenance of a national
life? Let History reply.
Turn to the roll of honor, — the names of those who
helped to create the New America, — and let each re
spond for the land of his birth. England, Ireland, Scot-
36 THE NEW AMERICA
land, Wales, Scandinavia, Holland, France, Germany,
Switzerland, and more; — for almost every nation of
Europe had representatives here, even then.
Out of the desperate struggle for freedom grew a
new and stronger ideal of patriotism, of love for the
country to which, voluntarily and unreservedly, they
had given their lives, their fortunes and their sacred
honor.
Without a common vision, a common ideal, the
nation could not have been born. Should the vision
fade, — should the ideal fail, — the nation could not
survive.
II
DEVELOPMENT
In her form and features still
The unblenching Puritan will,
Cavalier honor, Huguenot grace,
The Quaker truth and sweetness,
And the strength of the danger-girdled race
Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness.
From the homes of all, where her being began,
She took what she gave to Man ;
Justice, that knew no station,
Belief, as soul decreed,
Free air for aspiration,
Free force for independent deed !
She takes, but to give again,
As the sea returns the rivers in rain;
And gathers the chosen of her seed -
From the hunted of every crown and creed.
Fused in her candid light,
To one strong race all races here unite ;
Tongues melt in hers, hereditary foemen
Forget their sword and slogan, kith and clan;
'Twas glory, once, to be a Roman ;
She makes it glory, now, to be a man!
—BAYARD TAYLOR.
II
DEVELOPMENT
THE infant nation, numbering less than four
millions, faced its problems of growth and
development in the same resolute spirit that
had characterized its struggle for freedom.
After the achievement of independence the intel
lectual power of the New America began to manifest
itself in connection with a mastery of forces which
brought far-reaching results in the national life.
The invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 by Eli
Whitney, has been said by Edwin W. Morse, in
" Causes and Effects in American History," to have
had " a greater effect in later years upon political, in
dustrial and social conditions in the South than most
of the measures passed by the Federal Congresses.'*
In 1790 Fitch's invention of the steamboat, and,
in 1807, Fulton's invention of the paddle-wheel boat,
promoted the navigation of the country's waterways.
EXPLORATIONS
In 1791 Captain Robert Gray, commanding the
Columbia of Boston, a small ship of only a little more
than two hundred tons, on a voyage around the world,
entered the Columbia River and sailed up its stream
40 THE NEW AMERICA
for twenty-five miles. He carried the American flag
around the world, sold furs from the northwest coast
in China and brought back to Boston a cargo of tea.
His discovery of the great northwest river which he
named Columbia, after his ship, was the basis of the
claim established by the United States to the Oregon
country.
In 1804 the Lewis and Clark exploring expedition,
consisting of forty-five men in three boats, starting
from the village of Saint Louis, went up the Missouri,
over the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Co
lumbia River. Their return in 1806, their reports and
the results of their expedition are matters of American
history.
In 1805 the exploration of Captain Pike to the head
waters of the Mississippi, and, later, through the coun
try of the southwest, brought to the knowledge of the
people some idea of the value of the great almost
unknown region included under the name of " Louisi
ana," which had been purchased from the French in
1800. Besides more than doubling the previous area
of the United States, it was found to possess vast
agricultural and mineral wealth.
NEW ATTRACTIONS FOR IMMIGRATION
The acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1821, the
annexation of Texas in 1845, and the accession of
California in 1850 added enormously to the domain of
the nation. The opening of these vast areas for occu
pation attracted new immigration to America from the
DEVELOPMENT 41
crowded countries of Europe, greatly increasing the
population of the United States.
Agriculture was not the only lure to the New
America, although the opportunity to secure " home
steads " at low prices in addition to the cost of actually
settling and cultivating the lands, brought some of our
most desirable citizens from across the sea. The fact
that a certain portion of the public land was uniformly
appropriated for public schools gave assurance of edu
cation as well as of material support for family life.
The construction of roads and canals, the building
of bridges, the opening of new lines of communication
between different parts of the country in the early part
of the nineteenth century, brought a steadily increasing
immigration to meet the new opportunities for the
investment of industry as well as of money.
The introduction of railroads in 1830 brought a new
line of development and expansion, revolutionizing
previous methods of transportation and opening almost
incredible vistas of future prosperity. The manufac
ture of gas and its use in illumination, the invention of
cylinder printing-presses, of the telegraph, of the
sewing-machine, of farming machinery, indicate the
fact that intellectual development was keeping pace
with and inevitably promoting material prosperity,
while steadily increasing the demand for physical labor.
It was the great shipbuilding era of the United
States. " The building of the ship " not only stimu
lated the poetic fancy of our Longfellow, but it made
a reputation for our workmanship and our American
timber unequaled in the world. Not only were our
ships built at less cost than those of England, but they
42 THE NEW AMERICA
were swifter and lasted twice as long. One vessel is
reputed to have made one hundred and sixteen round
trips between New York and Liverpool in twenty-nine
years, and to have brought thirty thousand immigrants.
It is estimated that in the first year after the an
nouncement of the finding of , gold in California, in
1848, one hundred thousand men reached that coast in
search of the precious metal. Adventurers whose chief
incentive in coming to the New America had been the
hope of finding gold or its equivalent hastened to
join the " forty-niners," on the Pacific coast.
Planters of the South pushed into the middle West
of their latitudes for larger areas of productive land.
Puritans of New England, in increasing numbers,
pressed into New York, Ohio, and on westward,
carrying with them their system of free schools and
self-governing churches. Mr. Bancroft tells us that
the early Puritans of New England " were the parents
of one-third of the whole white population of the
United States as it was in 1834."
SOURCES AND CHARACTER OF IMMIGRATION
In the further development of the New America,
as in its beginnings, the " immigration problem " was
one of serious importance.
The national government began early to scan the
numbers, the source, the character, the destination and
the occupation of those who came. From 1820, on
ward, we find regular annual reports of immigration
among the Federal records.
Previous to 1883 ninety-five per cent of the total
FINNISH FAMILY
DEVELOPMENT 43
immigration was furnished by Northern and Western
Europe, including England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Nether
lands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. The great
majority came from Germany and Scandinavia. While
it is true that "they were prevailingly Teutonic in
blood and Protestant in religion," these general char
acteristics had many exceptions. Their motives for
coming were as diverse as those for the coming of
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe to-day.
Some study of conditions in the countries from
which our immigrants come is necessary to a just
understanding of various phases of the problems in
volved in their immigration. For instance, in 1845-
1855, the failure of the potato crop in Ireland led to
the coming of a million and a quarter of Irish immi
grants, many of whom were neither Teutonic nor
Protestant. Again, in 1882, their immigration was
greatly increased in consequence of another famine.
Those who came from the South of Ireland were
of a different race from the " Scotch-Irish " of the
North, of whom Professor Commons, in " Races and
Immigrants in America," says that " they are very
little Scotch and much less Irish," but " the most com
posite of all the people of the British Isles. ...
They are a mixed race through whose veins run the
Celtic blood of the primitive Scot and Pict, the primi
tive Briton, the primitive Irish, but with a larger
admixture of the later Norwegian, Dane, Saxon and
Angle."
They were immigrants from Scotland to Ulster in
the North of Ireland at the time of the " great settle-
44 THE NEW AMERICA
ment," in 1610. In 1718, three hundred and nineteen
men of them empowered their agent to negotiate terms
with the Governor of Massachusetts for their settle
ment in that colony. Ninety-six per cent of the
whole number wrote out their names in full. It has
been said that at that time in no other part of the
British dominions could such a proportion of men,
miscellaneously selected, have written their names.
Among the Scotch-Irish was a goodly number of
French Huguenots and of Hollanders who had come
over to England with King William from their native
countries. This stream of immigration turned partly
eastward and partly southward. At one time it formed
almost the entire population of- western Virginia and
of western North Carolina. In later days the Scotch-
Irish passed into Tennessee and Kentucky. Their de
scendants in that region still are to be found among
the " mountaineers," who furnish to-day so large a
proportion of the workers in Southern cotton-mills.
Early immigration from Germany was caused by
that intolerance both in church and state which led
to the Thirty Years' War. Protestantism, which began
in resisting abuses in the church, was continued logic
ally in resisting abuses of civic power. In 1710, after
the French devastation of the Palatinate, about 13,000
Germans emigrated to England, and of this number
about 4,000 came in a single year to America.
ASSISTED IMMIGRATION
The economic incentive was not lacking as a stimu
lant to this immigration. Professor Commons tells us
DEVELOPMENT 45
that " William Penn and his lessees, John Law, the
Dutch East India Company and many of the grantees
of lands in the colonies, sent their agents through
Western Europe and the British Isles with glowing
advertisements, advanced transportation and contracts
for indentured service by way of reimbursement."
And again, " Not only William Penn himself, but
other landowners in Pennsylvania and also shipowners
advertised the country in Germany, and thousands of
the poorer sort of Germans were induced to indenture
themselves to the settlers to whom they were auctioned
off by the ship captains in return for transportation.
Probably one-half of all the immigrants of the colonial
period came under this system of postpaid transporta
tion."
ILLITERACY
The settlement and development of the New America
would have been greatly retarded had literacy been a
test for the admission of immigrants during the early
periods of its history. William Heard Kilpatrick, in
" The Dutch Schools of New Netherland and Colonial
New York," tells us that " at Albany, of 360 men's
names examined, covering the years from 1654 to 1675,
21 per cent made their marks. Of 274 men's signa
tures at Flatbush, covering a longer period, 19 per
cent made their marks. Corresponding figures for
other American colonies are available in only a few
instances. Of the German male immigrants above
1 6 years of age who came to Pennsylvania in the first
half of the eighteenth century, 11,823 names have been
46 THE NEW AMERICA
counted, with the result of 26 per cent who made their
marks.
" Bruce found, by a most painstaking count of the
seventeenth-century Virginians, that of 2,165 male
adults who signed jury lists, 46 per cent made their
marks, and of 12,445 male adults who signed deeds
and depositions, 40 per cent made their marks. . . .
Putting all the Dutch women together, we get, for the
figures available, 154, a percentage of illiteracy of 60
per cent. Bruce found in Virginia, out of 3,066
women signing deeds and depositions, an illiteracy of
75 per cent."
In Suffolk County, Massachusetts, including Boston,
two volumes of published deeds were examined for
the years 1653-1656 and 1681-1697, in which it was
found that in each period n per cent of the men made
their marks. Of the women, 58 per cent in the first
period and 38 per cent in the second period made their
marks.
GERMAN IMMIGRATION
To-day no element in our immigration is more highly
esteemed than the German. But Mr. Hourwich, in
" Immigration and Labor," quotes from a letter of
Benjamin Franklin, dated Philadelphia, May 9, 1753,
as follows:
;< Those who come hither are generally the most stupid
of their own nation, and as ignorance is often attended
with great credulity, when knavery would mislead
k . . . it is almost impossible to remove any preju
dice they may entertain. * . . Not being used to
liberty they kno\v not how to make modest use of it.
DEVELOPMENT 47
... In short, unless the stream of importation could
be turned from this to other colonies, as you very
judiciously propose, they will soon outnumber us, that
all the advantages we will have will, in my opinion, be
not able to preserve our language, and even our gov
ernment will become precarious."
Considering the honor universally accorded our citi
zens of German origin to-day, this record of the appre
hension of an earlier time is reassuring in regard to the
possibilities of other nationalities who are not yet as
well known among us. At the present time, solicitude
in regard to German immigrants is due to the fact that
their proportion of our total immigration is less than it
was thirty years ago.
The cause of this decrease is to be found in the new
industrial opportunities offered to Germans at home.
In the closing years of the last century, Germany's
industrial expansion increased her demand for labor
to such an extent that she became a country of immi
gration instead of emigration. Since that time the
German immigration to the United States has been
chiefly from Austria-Hungary, instead of from Ger
many. Since 1880, immigrants from Italy, Russia,
especially Russian Poland, and Austria-Hungary have
gone in large numbers to Germany in response to the
demands for labor in the coal-mining districts, in the
agricultural regions and in the great industrial cities.
In 1898 Western Germany had 57,000 foreign-
speaking mine-workers — mostly Poles. The increase
in the production of pig-iron in Germany during the
last twenty years is nearly equal to that in the United
States. This increase has brought a corresponding
48 THE NEW AMERICA
increase in the development of railways and of freight
traffic.
Germany's new internal developments provide a
home market for the labor of her own people and com
pel her to welcome, besides, multitudes from the same
countries that provide our " new immigration," — Aus
tria-Hungary, Russia and Italy — with the difference
that it is naturally the stronger, more enterprising,
more courageous, more financially able, who will take
the longer journey and the greater risk involved in
crossing the sea to America, rather than merely cross
ing an imaginary line between their own country and
Germany.
The new demand for labor has led to improvement
in labor conditions. In addition to higher wages and
reduction in the number of hours, insurance against
sickness, old age and accident has made wage-earning
in Germany much more attractive than it was at the
height of German immigration to America in the '8o's,
when political oppression added to the discontent of
workingmen.
Political conditions in Germany now give no special
impetus to emigration. The disappearance of cheap
lands in the United States and the development of
modern intensive methods of agriculture in Germany
have further lessened the probability that the large
immigration of the last century from Germany to this
country will be repeated. It is not that Germans have
been " crowded out " of America, but that room has
been made for them at home.
DEVELOPMENT 49
SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRATION
In regard to emigration from Scandinavia, Mr. E.
H. Thornberg, of Stockholm, " an expert on the sub
ject, having first-hand knowledge of the matter," in
" The Women's International Quarterly " for October,
1912, makes a statement of changes in Sweden so
typical of changing conditions in other European coun
tries from which a large share of our " old immigra
tion " came, that it forms a valuable contribution to
our study of the subject.
Mr. Thornberg writes : " Since the middle of last
century Sweden has lost through emigration to differ
ent countries, especially to North America, about
i, 1 00,000 persons. . . .
" As early as 1638 Sweden founded in North
America a small colony on the shores of the Delaware,
a colony which more or less corresponds to the present
states of Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Swedish emigration, however, as we understand it,
only began about 1840, when the general stream of
emigrants began to rush over from the Old World to
America. At that time in this country there were sev
eral factors which co-operated to induce people to cross
the Atlantic.
"The birth-rate had been high during the period
1810-1830. Our young people were touched by a
spirit of adventure, and feeling their want of oppor
tunities at home and realizing the westward movement
in the United States, many made up their minds to
leave their native country. . . .
" In 1867-69 there were very poor harvests in
50 THE NEW AMERICA
Sweden and of course the consequences were disas
trous, especially for the agricultural population. At
the same time the United States was enjoying exceed
ingly prosperous conditions and the emigration from
this country reached higher figures than ever before.
In the eighties, when prosperous times in America
were again simultaneous with economic depression in
Sweden, the numbers of emigrating Swedes became
still larger, our high-water mark being reached in
1887. The figures for that year have never since been
equalled. During the four last decades, the figures
may have varied, but the general tendency is undoubt
edly a decreasing one The prospects of getting
a living at home are really better. The agricultural
and industrial life of Sweden is steadily making prog
ress, and the whole general standard of living is being
raised. . . .
' The wages of working men in our own country
cannot perhaps be raised to the American level of
nominal wages, but the aim of our social reformers
is to give them compensation by means of greater secu
rity and safety in the form of state insurance against
accidents, sickness, old age, and even, if it be prac
tical, unemployment, effective, more thorough-going
factory legislation, etc."
DIVERSION OF BRITISH EMIGRATION
In Great Britain to-day the efforts of the Home
Government are strongly on the side of directing emi
gration to the colonies of the British Dominion. Not
only so, the colonial governments themselves in Canada,
DEVELOPMENT 51
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are offer
ing special inducements to immigrants of British na
tionality.
Salaried agents of the Canadian government promote
immigration from Great Britain to the British colonies.
Each railroad ticket from Great Britain to Canada
sold to a British subject, signifying his intention to
follow farming or railway construction, secures to the
ticket-agent selling it a bonus of one pound sterling.
In addition to the definite promotion by British
Colonial government agencies of emigration to Brit
ish colonies, charitable, philanthropic and religious or
ganizations are enlisted in the same cause. In our
United States, in 1912, 1,333 aliens were excluded
because found to be contract laborers and 3.1 were
arrested and expelled from the country on the same
ground. But Canada and Australia are importing con
tract labor freely.
The gradual diversion of British immigration froni
America is due chiefly to changed conditions on the
other side of the sea and to strenuous efforts on the
part of Great Britain and her colonies to secure their
hold on their own people, and to promote through them
the expansion of their colonial enterprises.
FORCED IMMIGRATION
The development of the New America has been pro
moted not only by voluntary and assisted immigration
from Europe but by forced immigration from Africa.
In August, 1619, only a few days after the meeting
of the first representative assembly of Virginia, a
52 THE NEW AMERICA
Dutch man-of-war entered the James River and landed
on Virginia soil twenty negroes for sale. All the
original colonies received slaves from Africa within
their borders. In the background of the struggle for
their own freedom from oppression loomed the dark
shadow of an alien race enslaved by them.
ANTI-SLAVERY ENACTMENTS
In Rhode Island as early as 1652 a law was enacted
that " no black mankind by covenant, bond or other
wise, shall be held to perpetual service. At the end
of ten years the master shall set them free." In Ver
mont slavery was prohibited by law from the begin
ning. Early differences of opinion on the subject were
expressed in the colony of Virginia. In 1772, in the
Colonial Assembly, an address to the king was voted
stating that " The importation of slaves into the
colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been con
sidered as a trade of great inhumanity," and express
ing the fear that it " will endanger the very existence
of your majesty's American dominions." The address
proceeds, " We are sensible that some of your ma
jesty's subjects in Great Britain may reap emoluments
from this sort of traffic; but when we consider that it
greatly retards the settlement of the colonies with more
useful inhabitants, and may in time have the most
destructive influence, we presume to hope that the inter
est of a few will be disregarded, when placed in com
petition with the security and happiness of such num
bers of your majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects."
Mr. Bancroft tells us that " Thousands in Maryland
DEVELOPMENT 53
and in New Jersey were ready to adopt a similar
petition, so were the legislatures of North Carolina,
of Pennsylvania, of New York. Massachusetts, in
its towns and in its legislature, had reprobated the
condition of slavery as well as the sale of slaves." By
her constitution, adopted in 1780, Massachusetts be
came a free commonwealth, making the colored in
habitants, about six thousand in number, fellow-
citizens, without distinction, with white citizens.
Delaware, in 1776, in adopting its constitution as an
independent state, characterized its article prohibiting
the slave-trade, as one which " ought never to be vio
lated on any pretense whatever." On the adoption of
the constitution of New York, in 1777, the article
against the continuance of slavery was lost, notwith
standing the fact that " all New York's great states
men were abolitionists."
In 1778, Virginia succeeded in prohibiting what she
had attempted vainly before, — the introduction of any
slave by land or sea, — and ordered the emancipation of
every slave introduced from abroad. An attempt at
framing a bill for the emancipation and deportation of
resident slaves came to nothing.
In 1782, Thomas Jefferson declared, " Nothing is
more certainly written in the book of fate than that
these people are to be free," and, in the same year,
" I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. The way,
I hope, is preparing under the auspices of Heaven, for
a total emancipation."
54 THE NEW AMERICA
THE INSOLVABLE PROBLEM
After the signing of the Declaration of Independ
ence, slavery was one of the obstacles in the way of
effecting a strong confederation of the states.
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution of
the United States in 1788, it was found to be impossible
to secure agreement on the question of slavery. The
" three-fifths of all other persons," specified in Section
II of Article I, being understood to refer to slaves, was,
in effect, a bequest of the insolvable problem of forced
immigration to the posterity of those with whom it had
originated and who were unable to meet it. It was not
a silent, obscure problem. At every step of advance
ment for the new nation the shadow of slavery emerged
and claimed first consideration.
When Vermont, having been claimed both by New
York and New Hampshire, and having succeeded in
making good her own claim to separate existence as a
commonwealth, applied for membership in the Con
federation, her admission was postponed until she
could be " paired " with a new slave-holding state, in
order to maintain " the balance of power."
Thomas Jefferson and others with similar convic
tions succeeded in securing for the great " Northwest
Territory " the guarantee of freedom in the ordinance
that " there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in pun
ishment of crimes."
It was adopted two years before the Constitution of
the United States went into operation because it took
effect immediately, while the Constitution, after being
DEVELOPMENT 55
framed at about the same time, was sent to the states
to be adopted by their conventions.
GROWING COMPLICATIONS
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin, in 1793,
revolutionized the chief industry of the Southern
States. Giving increased facility in preparing cotton
for market, it increased the demand for labor in con
nection with its production, thereby enhancing the
value of their negro slaves to the Southern planters. It
has been said that this invention " increased the value
of slave-labor more than one hundred and sixty fold."
Within ten years the exports of cotton increased more
than one hundred fold, bringing a corresponding in
crease in wealth to the planters. Regarding slavery
as essential to their financial prosperity, they gradually
ceased to think of it as a scourge and a curse. After
a time it came to be a cherished institution, to be
guarded from all outside regulation.
In the slave states, free immigration from Europe
had not greatly increased. Not only was the dignity
of labor, so strongly emphasized in the North, more
attractive to immigration than the prospect of sharing
the conditions and the social stigma placed on the
labor of slaves in the South, but the growing manu
factures of the North constantly attracted mechanics,
while the lands for farming brought agriculturalists.
Gradually, but surely, it became evident that the free
North was gaining dominance in almost every realm
of the national life. Even the fact that three-fifths of
the slaves counted in the enumeration which secured
56 THE NEW AMERICA
to their masters representation in Congress, did not
suffice to preserve for the South " the balance of
power/' in legislative affairs, while the North was re
inforced with the rapidly increasing immigration from
Europe.
THE POWER OF RELIGIOUS CONVICTION
When the question of the annexation of Texas arose
in Congress intense opposition was developed on the
part of some members to the project, as one to in
crease the slave-holding area of the United States.
Daniel Webster, speaking at a reception in New York
in March, 1837, said, " When I say that I regard
slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political
evil, I only use language which has been adopted by
distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding
states. . . .
" On the general question of slavery, a great portion
of the community is already strongly excited. The
subject has not only attracted attention as a question
of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned chord.
It has arrested the religious feeling of the country; it
has taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He
is a rash man indeed, and little conversant with human
nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate
of the character of the people of this country, who
supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with,
or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be re
spected."
DEVELOPMENT 57
THE FINAL STRUGGLE
The " irrepressible conflict " grew more and more
intense between representatives in Congress of slave-
holding states and representatives of free states. In
1860 the war-cloud which had grown steadily darker
since the first compromise concerning slavery, burst
over the country. The very existence of the United
States as a nation was at stake.
When the call came for volunteer troops to maintain
the Union, recent immigrants from across the sea joined
citizens of American birth in service which proved
their readiness to pay the cost of citizenship in their
adopted country. The effort to solve the problem of
forced immigration was traced in characters of blood
and flame through the anguish of the Civil War in
1860-65.
Its record is in the Thirteenth Amendment of the
Constitution of the United States :
" ARTICLE XIII., Sec. I. Neither slavery nor in
voluntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.
" Section II. Congress shall have power to enforce
this article by appropriate legislation."
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR
In 1862, our immigration, for the first time since
1844, was less than one hundred thousand. As the
regular occupations of civil life were resumed, immi-
58 THE NEW AMERICA
gration increased and, in 1866, was more than three
hundred thousand. In 1882 it reached nearly eight
hundred thousand.
A government chart of immigration showing the
numbers of each nationality represented in each year
from 1820 to the present time, gives a vivid picture
of the changes which have taken place in our popula
tion. The most impressive feature of the chart is not
the statistics of total immigration, but the change in
the countries having largest representation in the mak
ing of those totals.
Ill
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN
ELEMENTS
Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and
you,
Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly
true.
Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and
still could find,
Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,
Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practiced hustings-
liar ;
So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the
Higher.
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the
Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?
There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the
street.
There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily
bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.
Move among your people, know them, follow him who led the
way,
Earth would never touch her worst, were one in fifty such
as he.
Ere she gain her Heavenly-best, a God must mingle with the
game.
Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half control his
doom —
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
Ill
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS
FROM 1883 to 1907 eighty-one per cent of our
European immigration came from the countries
of Central and Southern Europe, — Austria-Hun
gary, Bulgaria, Servia, Rumania, Greece, Montenegro,
Russia (including Poland), Portugal, Spain, Italy,
Syria and Turkey.
ITALIANS
In numbers, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia have
led all the others. In 1907 these three countries fur
nished nearly seventy per cent of the total immigra
tion of the year. In the years 1899 to 1910, Italians
led all others: 372,668 came from North Italy, 1,911,-
933 from South Italy, — a total of more than two and
one-fourth millions.
North Italians differ from South Italians as much
as the Scotch-Irish of Ulster differ from the people
of Southern Ireland. Of those who came in the years
1899 to 1909 inclusive, n.8 per cent of North Italian
immigrants were illiterate; of South Italians, 54.2 per
cent.
Italian freedom has given even to South Italy some
amelioration of her condition, and the rise of educa-
61
63 THE NEW AMERICA
tion gives promise for her future. South Italians are
among the most illiterate of the races coming to us
to-day; but their illiteracy in the home land is steadily
diminishing.
The reports of the Commissioner-General of Immi
gration from 1899 to 1910 show that the proportion
of women to men in the North Italian immigration is
21.7 to 78.3 per cent, and of the South Italian 21.4 to
78.6 per cent. Seventy-four per cent of North Italian
immigrants are reported as having returned to their
native land, in contrast with 41 per cent of South
Italians.
Victor Von Borosini, in The Survey for September,
28, 1912, says, " One lesson they all take home is the
knowledge of how great a handicap is illiteracy in
the struggle for existence. Hence they favor strongly
obligatory instruction for their children, and co-operate
willingly to extend the system."
Emigration to America is undertaken by many fami
lies in hope of " doing better for the children." A
cobbler in New York, replacing a lost heel on a shoe,
started with a sudden illumination of his dark face at
the mention of Naples. " You see my country, — my
Italy?" he asked. "Then you know the beauty, the
art everywhere, for the poorest ! "
'* You have left your Italy," was the response.
"Shall you go back?"
" No-o," he said slowly. " My children, — for them,
America. My boy, he go school, read, write, be man.
My boy, — he no putta heel on shoe." He had named
the charm of America to thousands of foreign-speaking
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 63
parents among us. The children are to rise above the
condition of their fathers and mothers.
The density of population in Italy is in excess of
that of Germany, France, India or China. In the
South of Italy, where the birth-rate is highest and
the poverty greatest, taxes are most exorbitant; 13,000
sales of land for non-payment of taxes have been
made in a single year.
In the matter of safeguarding emigrants, Italy leads
all other nations. The contract for transportation is
written, and a copy must be transmitted to the Emigra
tion Service of Italy. Each ticket must contain the
name of the emigrant, name of agent and company,
and of the boat (with its age, speed, tonnage, flag,
date of departure and duration of trip), price paid for
ticket, weight and number of pieces of luggage. The
menus and quantity of food to which a person is en
titled must be printed on the back of the Italian ticket.
Italy provides for proper medical treatment in illness
and, in case of death, for decent burial at sea.
These indications of interest on the part of the gov
ernment even for citizens who emigrate to another
land may influence the intense love of the Italian for
his own Italy. However illiterate, he idolizes his
national heroes and revels in the art and the beauty of
his native land.
An Italian visited in his quarters in a construction
camp shack, brought out from under his bunk a collec
tion of beautiful photographs of Italian sculpture and
architecture, and, displaying them to his visitor, said
proudly : " Italia, mm." Then indicating writh an ex
pressive shrug of shoulder, gesture of hand and dis-
64 THE NEW AMERICA
tortion of face, his surroundings in the shack, he added,
" America ! " with contemptuous emphasis.
The rift between church and state in Italy has weak
ened the hold of the church on many of the most
patriotic and intelligent citizens. The leaders who
achieved liberty for Italy have a stronger hold on their
imagination and their enthusiasm than the Pope or his
subordinates. A very large proportion of the Italians
coming to America have dropped their allegiance to the
Roman church and are in danger of dropping with it
their ideals of religious life. They are susceptible to
religious influences, and responsive to the ideal of
human life in direct communion with divine life.
Of their country it has been said truly, " Italy never
became barbarian." The illiteracy of the present can
not dim the genius of the past, or make the world
forget what art and science owe to Italy. In science
Galileo, Galvani and Marconi connect the past with the
present in title to the gratitude of the world. In paint
ing no names have come to replace Michael Angelo,
Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Da Vinci, Titian and Fra
Angelico. Her Dante and Petrarch and Tasso and
Savonarola have given lessons of religion, of life and
of character not only for their own day but for all
generations since then until now.
SLAVS
The Russian is the leading nationality of the great
Slav group which, in the last twelve years, has fur
nished a large proportion of our European immigra-
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 65
tion. In this group belong the Poles, Rumanians,
Ruthenians, Bohemians, Moravians, Bulgarians, Ser
vians, Montenegrins, Croatians, Slovenians, Slovaks
and others — believed to comprise in all about 125,-
000,000 of the population of the globe.
Of the so-called Russian immigration, only about
two per cent really is Russian. Russian peasants, as a
rule, are too poor to emigrate, — perhaps too much
inured to oppression to possess the energy, the enter
prise, the courage, the initiative, involved in emigra
tion. The Poles and Lithuanians are Slavic peoples
long since conquered and annexed by Russia. The
Finns, although dominated by Russia, are a Teutonic
people with a Mongol language.
RUSSIAN JEWS
Five-sixths of the Jewish immigration in America
comes from Russia and the majority of the other one-
sixth comes from adjoining territory in Austria-Hun
gary and Rumania. The anti-Semitic riots in 1881 led
to the beginning of the large immigration to America,
which has continued for similar reasons since. His
high birth-rate, and his low death-rate make the
Jew an important element in the computation of immi
gration statistics and possibilities. His tenacity of life
is equalled by his innate tenacity of purpose.
The librarian of the Children's Department of a
Public Library in the lower East Side of New York,
in speaking of this characteristic of Jewish children,
said, " If a child of almost any other nationality, asking
for a particular book, is told that the book is out but
66 THE NEW AMERICA
that we have another which I think that he will like
just as well, he is easily persuaded to take the available
book and to be quite content with the substitution. A
Hebrew child, on the contrary, listens to my glowing
account of the substitute book, looking meantime with
unsatisfied eyes into my face, and when I have finished,
says, ' But I want ,' naming the book for which he
has asked. When he has been convinced that it really
is out, he asks, * When will it be in ? * He takes no
substitute, but comes again and again for that particu
lar book, and, having secured it, he reads it through to
the end."
It is a fact well known that the sections of New
York in which Jews predominate are the sections
in which library records show the largest per cent
of solid reading, — the smallest per cent of fiction, — the
least of what by any classification can be considered
" trash." In our colleges and universities Jews are
ranking high in scholarship. Their increasing domi
nance in America is worthy of thoughtful considera
tion in any estimate of the future life of our Republic.
RUSSIAN CHRISTIANS
The Russian Protestant Christians who come to us
are largely imbued with that same type of freedom-
loving which Mr. Oscar S. Straus in " Roger Williams,
the Pioneer of Religious Liberty," imputes to the
founder of Rhode Island, characterizing him as " the
Apostle of the American system of a free Church
in a free State."
The doctrine of the separation of church and state
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 67
is now so generally accepted and so unyieldingly advo
cated by most bodies of Christians in America that no
denomination can claim any monopoly of it; but in
Russia, where it is steadily making headway under the
advocacy of the Baptist denomination through whose
insistence it was first promulgated in America, it is
costing imprisonment, fines and scourgings more se
vere than in its early advocacy in America.
It is not despotic Russia that asks to be received in
America, but the suffering victims of Russia's despot
ism. We frequently are warned to beware of senti-
mentalism in the study of immigration, and are assured
that however it may have been in earlier days the
motive for present-day immigration is economic. The
sufferings of Jews in Russia are so well known as
to require no new description; but the need of asylum
from persecution for Protestant Christians is not so
well understood. From many authentic cases, two or
three may be given here :
Andreas Erstratenko, born in Russia, in 1863, was
a strong partisan of the Greek Catholic Church. At
twenty-seven years of age, after joining in severe
persecution of Protestants, he says of himself, " One
day it dawned on me that, right or wrong, they had a
right to their religious views, and I resolved to investi
gate them. So strong a hold did the faith take that I
began to preach." Then began a long series of per
secutions. Imprisoned in a dungeon, nearly starved,
beaten, tortured and scourged many times, he refused
to recant.
Feodott Kastromin, born in the middle of the nine
teenth century, converted to the Protestant faith in
68 THE NEW AMERICA
1884, was arrested and taken before a magistrate who
announced to him the forfeiture of all civil rights
unless he would return to the orthodox church. Six
years later he was banished to Transcaucasia because
of persistent refusal to renounce his religion. His
property was confiscated, his family was broken up
and separated by hundreds of miles from each other.
Although loaded with heavy chains, scourged and
beaten until nearly dead, he never yielded to the re
peated offer of freedom in return for the renunciation
of his faith.
Vasilia Ivanoff was twice exiled, imprisoned in
thirty-one different prisons, forced to work in the
treadmill, chained to gangs of robbers, " and worse."
His only offense was that of being a Protestant and
communicating his faith to others. He has persistently
paid the cost of his faith and has baptized fifteen hun
dred adult men and women. Others of the same na
tionality and faith have left all in Russia and have
brought to America their wives and children, in the
hope of securing here for their own families and for
those who may come after them, what Russia fails to
give.
Is there room for such citizens in America? If they
lack full enlightenment as to the principles of freedom
and of democratic government their experiences have
been such as to make them apt pupils under sympathetic
teaching. In the Conference of State Officials on Dis
tribution of Admitted Aliens and Other Residents,
held in Washington, in November, 1911, the repre
sentative of North Dakota reported, " The Russian
people are among the very best settlers in the western
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 69
portion of the state. [They are] good citizens, good
farmers and a valuable element for the state to have."
AUSTRO-HUNGARIANS
Austria-Hungary has been called the " most com
plicated social mosaic of all modern nations."
Within, the personal influence of the Emperor, with
out, the rival interests of adjoining nations, hold
together elements which have little in common, and
whose large emigration suggests the centrifugal forces
at work among the people.
The chronic political unrest in Austria-Hungary, the
mutual hatred of races which never have amalgamated
with each other in all the centuries of their joint occu
pancy of the country, are matters worthy of study
by all who realize the seriousness of immigration prob
lems, and the desirability of learning from the experi
ence of other nations.
MAGYARS AND SLOVAKS
The Asiatic Magyars, despising the Slavs whom they
conquered a thousand years ago, still inhabit the fer
tile plains which they appropriated for themselves.
The Slovaks, subject to Austria-Hungary, feeling
everywhere the yoke of the Magyar and of the Ger
man power which makes the laws, owns the land and
manages administration, are born to a heritage of
hatred of their usurpers.
Some Slovak young men in an American city left
a class in English after being asked to read a few
70 THE NEW AMERICA
paragraphs extolling Kosstith. Their explanation was,
" Kossuth was no friend to Slovaks."
In another city, well-meaning friends built a two-
storied chapel for Hungarians, offering the use of one
story to Slovaks and the other to the Magyars of the
same religious denomination. They found that neither
company would occupy it if the other were to find a
meeting-place under the same roof.
A Slovak peasant girl, eighteen years of age, a few
weeks after her arrival in America, used her first
knowledge of English words to acquaint her employer
with herself, in this manner. " Me, Paulina Dvora, —
me Oongar.* Yes, Oongar Slovak, not Magyar. Mag
yar? No! Slovak? Yes! Fader, moder, broder, sis
ter, all, all Slovak, — not Magyar. Lady oonderstand ? "
By means of facial expression and gesture this im
migrant from a little peasant home on the Carpathian
Mountain-side was able to make her limited English
vocabulary express volumes as to her estimate of the
relative merits of the two races. Later, a growth in
the vocabulary of mutually understood words enabled
her to give in some detail to her employer her version
of the thousand years' old conquest of her native land
by Magyars and of her estimate of them as the
newly rich of the country.
The Magyars, in discussing this ancient history, are
more likely to manifest the graceful air of the con
querors who, having won, find it easy to accept the
verdict of the arms of their ancestors.
The Jews of Austria-Hungary, enjoying there a
greater degree of consideration than elsewhere except
* Hungarian.
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 71
in America, have become the controllers of finance,
public and private, to such an extent that the Magyars
themselves, in numbers which are causing uneasiness
in their own government circles, are emigrating to
America in search of new opportunities for economic
advantage.
OTHER SLAVIC RACES IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
Among the Slavic people of the northern mountain
region of Austria-Hungary are the Czechs, or Bo
hemians, the Moravians, the Poles and the Ruthenians.
In the south are the Croatians, Servians, Slovenians,
Dalmatians, Rumanians.
The Ruthenians, who share the subjection of their
fellow Slavs of other names, have their own inherited
hatred of the Poles whose serfs they were in the days
of Poland's departed power.
Aside from the Jews, who characteristically are city-
dwellers, the people of Austria-Hungary are agri
culturalists and foresters. They are lovers of the soil
and of their own homes. But in addition to unhappy
civic conditions, prohibitive prices for ownership and
for rental are driving the peasants from the country
to find a possibility of economic independence else
where.
Professor Balch tells us of some " emigrants from
the rich eastern countries of Croatia and Slavonia,
who, seeming to have no economic reason for leaving
home, when asked why they were going, said, " We
go to see if there still is justice in the world."
Are they finding it in America? They are chiefly
72 THE NEW AMERICA
engaged here in mining, forestry and heavy construc
tion work.
The Annual Report of the Bureau of Industries and
Immigration of the New York State Department of
Labor, 1911, tells us that " Camps on public works are
devoid of any Americanizing influences. With two ex
ceptions there are no amusements or recreations other
than the saloon, no educational influences and no re
ligious influences. Most of them have no regulations
and are remote from authorities and are therefore a
law unto themselves. . . . With the exception of the
aqueduct workers, these men are crowded into the
barest shanties, hovels or barns, with no sanitary pro
visions, and none of the decencies of life, to say nothing
of the comforts. These quarters provide bunk-space
only, and here laborers must keep their clothes, sup
plies of food, and all other possessions. . . . The
greed or cupidity of the bosses crowds them into quar
ters which soon become so vermin- and germ-ridden
that they prefer to sleep out of doors. . . . There is
not a greater menace to the morality and health of our
cities to-day than these camps. ... It must be re
membered that aliens come into these camps, very often
directly from the steamers, through the hands of a
padrone who is the only person other than their fellow-
workmen whom they really know. . . . [They] get
the first, and very often their only impressions of
America, from these padroni and camps."
The Report proceeds, " The need of learning English
to progress economically, to prevent accidents, to be
come citizens, to enable the men to understand their
work better and to adopt American standards of living
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 73
is imperative. . . . These are matters of vital inter
est to the State of New York, and if these men are to
come in and build the works which make this State in
dustrially great, and to man the industries which make
it economically powerful, it must be realized that its
power, civic and political, also depends in some measure
on the treatment and opportunities afforded to these
workmen."
POLISH IMMIGRATION
From 1899 to 1910 more than 949,000 Poles were
counted among our immigrants. Coming from a coun
try which is no longer theirs, fleeing from the tyranny
of Russia, they are appreciative of the degree of
liberty which they find in the land of their adoption.
They are dominantly religious by nature. It has
been customary to classify them all as Catholics, but
it is estimated that not more than two-thirds of the
3,000,000 in this country are affiliated with the
Catholic Church. With them, as with immigrants
from other Catholic countries, the weakening of ties
with the native land and the finding of a larger civic
life than the Old World had offered, tend to weaken
the hold of that type of religion which is associated
in their minds with the type of government which they
have left. Unless a new phase of religious life meets
them with the new civic life, the tendency is to feel
religion to be outgrown and to become irreligious.
Lord Bacon's aphorism, " Discipline by bishops is
fittest for monarchy of all others," is an apt expression
of the unconscious attitude of multitudes of immi-
74 THE NEW AMERICA
grants who, in coming to America, leave behind them
" the discipline of bishops," with " monarchy," in the
Old World.
" We call them Polacks," said the crude young fore
man of a cotton mill. " They don't know anything but
to work, and we drive them like cattle to that."
Perhaps it had not occurred to the young foreman
that Paderewski, " the greatest pianist ever," whom he
had heard play a few evenings before, is a " Pole,"
or that Chopin was their fellow-countryman, or that
Copernicus was of their nationality. He may never
have heard of Pulaski and Kosciusko and of our in
debtedness to their services in the Revolutionary War,
when they fought for our independence. In those days
we were poor and small, numbering only about three
and a half million souls. Poland was one of the great
powers of Central Europe two hundred years before the
beginning of our national life.
If the young foreman is a worthy son of the
American Revolution he will find a way to pay to
these newcomers, in some measure, the debt which
his ancestors and he owe to the Poles who helped
to give freedom to the New America. Of Polish im
migrants admitted in 1899-1909, 35.4 per cent were
illiterate. The foreman will help not only the Poles,
but, quite as much, the Americans among whom the
Poles live, if he will teach reading and writing to
these new residents of his country, who never have had
his opportunities for education.
Mr. Alexander E. Cance, in charge of that part of
the report of the Federal Immigration Commission
which treats of the " new immigration " in agriculture,
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 75
says in The Survey of January 7, 1911, "The goal
of early Polish immigration was northern Illinois and
Wisconsin. After 1885 the stream of Slavic immi
gration set in very strongly, and Polish rural colonies
began to dot the prairies of Minnesota and the Dakotas
as well as the Lake states.
" Unlike the early peasants, who came directly from
Europe in search of cheap land and homes of their
own, a large percentage of these men are day-laborers
who have been engaged in the mines, steel mills, quar
ries or urban industrial pursuits, and who are attracted
to farms by advertisements in Polish papers or the
solicitation of Polish land agents. They settle in small
groups, their location is directed, they bring more
money than the arrivals directly from abroad, and
when they are fairly dealt with they make more rapid
progress than the earlier immigration."
In a Conference on Distribution of Admitted Aliens
and Other Residents, held in Washington in 1911,
the representative of Wisconsin said, " The Polish
have proven to be very good citizens with us. We
wrant all the Polish people we can get, every one."
In the same conference, the representative from
Massachusetts reported, " In Massachusetts the Po-
lander goes out into the western part of the state and
buys up land that has been perhaps deserted by the
Yankee. They want to own the soil, to own their own
farms, and they are making very great successes out
there."
The subject which was considered by the Polish
National Alliance, recently assembled in its congress — •
" How Poles may become better citizens of this coun-
76 THE NEW AMERICA
try while retaining their love for the traditions of
their motherland "• — gives some indication of their
attitude toward the land of their adoption.
BOHEMIANS
It has been said of Bohemians by one of their
own nationality that " they have had such a stormy
national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered
into their lives that it is impossible to judge them
rightly apart from it."
We who know little of them shall fail to estimate
their true value as citizens unless we know something
of their past. It is well known that only a fraction
more than one per cent of them are illiterate, — less
than the per cent of illiterate native-born Ameri
cans. Is it equally well known that their University
of Prague was founded in 1348, — more than half a
century earlier than the great German universities, —
and that it was the first higher institution of learning
in that part of Europe? At the time of the death of
its founder, King Charles I. of Bohemia, in 1378, it
had enrolled more than seven thousand students.
In the fourteenth century the assertion by Charles I.
of the right of the electors to choose the emperor
without waiting for the confirmation of their choice by
the Pope, was considered revolutionary and was the
harbinger of the separation of church and state, which
in that age seemed incredible, but which is now a
fundamental principle of our government.
When John Huss was burned at the stake, in 1415,
the University declared him a saint and a martyr, and
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 77
Bohemians, nobles and common people, swore that to
their latest breath they would uphold the religious
freedom for which he had given his life.
When Ferdinand II. began his reign in 1619, nine-
tenths of the population was Protestant. At its end,
eighteen years later, with the aid of the Catholic
League and the Jesuits, he had banished and destroyed
the representatives of Protestantism throughout Bo
hemia.
At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia
was one of the most advanced countries of Europe in
point of culture. The population of more than four
millions was reduced by starvation, by torture, by vari
ous forms of martyrdom and by exile, to eight hundred
thousand. What outrages, what indignities, what hor
rors, have not the ancestors of present-day Bohemians
suffered in the name of religion ! No race of people on
earth has a deeper right to see manifested a spirit of true
Christian brotherhood than Bohemians, in connection
with whom the term has been so travestied.
Not only were life, property and religious freedom
destroyed by the unrelenting persecutors of Protestant
Bohemians, but their priceless literature, instinct for
two hundred years with a spirit of freedom and pa
triotism, was condemned to the flames.
Bohemians began coming to America in large num
bers after the revolution of 1848. They settled in
New York, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago and in rural
districts in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas and
California. Texas has a Bohemian population of more
then 50,000, engaged principally in agriculture. More
than half of them now own their own property, free of
78 THE NEW AMERICA
debt. A recent writer in the Texas Magazine tells us
that, " together with the Germans, the Bohemian farm
ers have given Texas her great agricultural industries,
and have been responsible largely for her rapid de
velopment." Favorable comment is made by this
writer on their quickness " to utilize improvements in
machinery and methods of agriculture."
100,189 Bohemians and Moravians came to the
United States between 1899 and 1910. More than one-
half of the Bohemians coming to us are skilled work
men. Of the Germans and Dutch, one-third are skilled,
and of the Scandinavians, one-fourth.
Bohemians have qualities which any nation might
covet for its citizens. To inspire them with a new
patriotism, a new faith in their fellow-men, a new
trust in their Father as the leader of all His children
toward increasing light and power, is a task well worth
the effort of American Christendom.
BALKAN RACES
The year 1912 saw the coming into prominence
among European nations of a group of nationalities
little known in modern times. Until recently " The
Balkans " has not been written large in accounts of
the nations of the world. We now know more of some
of the people of the Balkan peninsula than ever before,
and are turning with new interest to the records made
in America by their representatives who have come to
our shores.
Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigra
tion show that from 1899 to 1910, of Bulgarians,
GREEK BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM
ADDITIONAL EUROPEAN ELEMENTS 79
Servians and Montenegrins, classed together, 97,391
came to the United States. In the same period we
received 82,704 Rumanians. Of Dalmatians, Bosnians
and Herzegovinians, 31,696. Of Croatians and Slo
venians, classed together, 335,543; of Greeks, 216,962;
of Turks, 12,954, — a total of 777,250.
At first glance, the most impressive feature of the
immigration record of these nationalities is the high
per cent of illiteracy; in the first group, 41.8 per cent;
in the second, 34.7; in the third, 36.4; in the fourth
36.4; of the Greeks 27, of the Turks 58.9 per cent.
Theodore Roosevelt in The Outlook, for November
23, 1912, says, " No other nation has traveled so far
and so fast as Bulgaria has traveled in the last third of
a century."
In America, Bulgarians are found oftenest in the
Middle West, Northwest, South and Southwest.
They are characterized by industry and thrift. They,
with Greeks and Macedonians, are patronizers of
coffee-houses rather than of saloons. They and the
Greeks are named by investigators of the Immigration
Commission, as living " most plainly " of all the group
of nationalities with which they were found associated.
They are reported as strong workers in iron and
steel, — " rather heavy, patient, serious toilers."
Those in America who knew the Bulgarian best
were least prepared for his transfiguration in a white
heat of patriotism, as he dropped his tools and started
in a wild rush to meet the opportunity of the centuries
in his native land.
The Bulgarians at home are described as being char
acterized by indomitable courage and thrift, by "a
80 THE NEW AMERICA
passion for education," and by " purity of home life
maintained through a thousand years." Since 1885,
when they freed themselves from Russia, they have
improved their opportunity for educational and indus
trial advancement. In another quarter of a century a
new record of literacy will be made.
The Bible in the vernacular, brought to every Bul
garian fireside, has been the great inspiring agency of
the new life in Bulgaria, and two Christian colleges —
Robert and the Constantinople College for Girls — have
furnished leaders for the expression of the new life.
Dr. Edward A. Steiner, in Tlie Outlook of Novem
ber 9, 1912, reminds us that " \vhile in the north of
Europe our forefathers built schools and followed the
arts and commerce, the people of the Balkans held
watch upon their mountains, followed the plow, sword
in hand, that we in peace might prepare ourselves for
the great tasks of Christian culture and civiliza
tion. . . .
" [The Balkan spirit] is a religious spirit bearing
the imprint of a great mission. To have been a wall
against the battering-rams of the Moslem, to have
borne the brunt of the first onslaught, to have felt the
last assaults of his retreating armies, has been a sacri
ficial and a vicarious task." Does America need citi
zens capable of such tasks ?
IV
TENDENCIES
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun ;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
Thou, who hast here in concord furled
The war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee : but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold !
Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law ;
And, cast in some diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old !
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
IV
TENDENCIES
THE government of the United States is definitely
facing the problem of the future as to new ad
missions. The people of the United States in
their individual capacity must face the problem of the
future with those who already are here.
The question of what the character of this nation
is to be for future generations is as important for our
citizens of alien birth as for descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers, or of the first families of Virginia. A nation
as truly as an individual has its mission to perform,
its characteristic influence to exert on the character
of the world.
CONTROL OF IMMIGRATION
In 1882 our federal government first assumed the
function of controlling immigration. A conviction of
the determinative bearing of immigration on the entire
life and the whole future of America led to the creation
by Congress, in 1907, of the Immigration Commission.
This Commission gave four years to the study of the
problem committed to it. It " secured original informa
tion concerning more than 3,000,000 individuals, or
about one-thirtieth of the population of the United
84 THE NEW AMERICA
States, including one-eighth of all the public school
children; and, in some of the leading industries as
many as fifty per cent of the total number of wage-
earners employed." The resulting data certainly are
entitled to be considered with care, whatever con
clusions may be drawn from them.
TESTS FOR ADMISSION OF IMMIGRANTS
The concern of our government for the effect of
immigration on our national life has led to more
stringent regulations, more severe tests for admission
and more rigid application of such tests. The regula
tions reject all who are physically or mentally feeble or
diseased, all criminal, all immoral, all insane. They
compel steamship companies to return free all passen
gers rejected by our immigration officials, fining them
in addition $100 for each case.
The table on the opposite page, copied from the Re
port of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for 1912,
gives the number and causes of rejections for the years
1907 to 1912, inclusive.
ADMITTED IMMIGRANTS
At the time of entrance more than 80 per cent of
our immigrants are between fourteen and forty-four
years of age. It is the time of greatest strength and
productivity in the average human life. A little more
than 12 per cent are under fourteen years of age, the
period of greatest susceptibility. Five per cent are
more than forty-four years of age.
TENDENCIES
85
CAUSE OF REJECTION
1907
1908
1909
1910
I9II
1912
Idiots
2Q
20
18
16
12
JO
Imbeciles
4.K
42
4.O
26
44
Feeble-minded persons.
Insanity (including epi
leptics)
180
121
184
121
167
125
108
126
144
1 10
111
Likely to become public
charges, including
paupers and beggars. .
Afflicted with contagious
diseases
6,866
3,822
3,741
2 847
4,458
2 1O8
15,927
1 Oil
12,048
2 715
8,182
1.674
Afflicted with tubercu
losis
CQ
82
QC
III
74.
Physically or mentally
defective .
870
070
112
1 O5<?
2,288
Criminals
141
136
271
580
644
502
Prostitutes and other
immoral women
18
1 24.
121
3l6
251
263
Procurers of prostitutes
Contract laborers.
i
i 4-14.
43
I 0^2
181
1,172
179
I 786
141
1, 116
192
1,333
The Immigration Commission, in its study of tend
encies, had an accurate record kept for seven months
from August i, 1908, to February 28, 1909, of all
charity patients entering Bellevue and other allied hos
pitals in New York where the great bulk of immigrant
patients are treated.
ALCOHOLISM
The Report of the Commission tells us that " of
the 23,758 cases treated at Bellevue and allied hos
pitals during the period covered by the Commission's
inquiry, 25.5 per cent of the native-born and 18.2
per cent of the foreign-born persons involved were
treated for alcoholism. Among the foreign-born this
treatment was confined almost entirely to the races
86 THE NEW AMERICA
of old immigration, such as the Irish, Scotch, English
and Germans, while relatively very few southern and
eastern Europeans were treated for that cause. A
striking difference between the old and new immigra
tion in this regard was also apparent to a greater or
less degree in the many industrial communities included
in the Commission's general investigation."
INSANITY
Much has been said of insanity among representa
tives of the new immigration. Statistics * compiled
from United States Census, Special Report, " Insane
and Feeble-minded in Hospitals and Institutions,
1904," show that the number of insane in hospitals in
the United States in 1903 was 186.2 to 100,000 popu
lation. In England and Wales it was 340.1, in Ire
land 490.9, in Austria in 1901, 57; in Hungary in
1902, 14.1. In continental United States, of the
foreign-born white insane enumerated in hospitals in
1903, 29 per cent were born in Ireland, 26.9 per cent
in Germany, 6.5 per cent in Canada, 2.3 per cent in
Italy, 2.2 per cent in Hungary and Bohemia, 4.4 per
cent in Russia and Poland.
These statistics seem to indicate that the people of
our new immigration are relatively a sane, " level
headed " class. The serious and disturbing changes of
environment, of occupation and of mode of living, the
misunderstandings, disappointments, injustices and dis-
*From "The Immigration Problem," by Jeremiah W. Jenks,
Ph.D., LL.D., and W. Jett Lauck, A.B. Funk & Wagnalls
Company, New York and London.
TENDENCIES 87
tresses of body and mind which they experience as a
result of ignorance of the language and customs of
the country, might easily distract them to the verge of
insanity if they were not well-poised by nature and by
habit.
PAUPERISM
Does the new immigration tend to add to the pauper
ism of America?
Immigrants are not allowed to enter empty-handed.
The Secretary of Commerce and Labor, reporting for
1912, says, " The total amount of money shown to in
spection officers by arriving aliens during the past
fiscal year was $30,353,721, or an average of about
$36 per person."
From 1907 to 1912 inclusive, immigrants to the num
ber of 51,222 were rejected on the ground of being
" liable to become a public charge."
The Immigration Commission, with the assistance of
the Associated Charities in forty-three cities, — taking
in practically all the large immigrant centers except
New York, — during six months including the winter
of 1908-1909, reached the conclusion that " only a
very small percentage of the immigrants now arriving
apply for relief." This statistical investigation * cov
ered 31,374 cases actually receiving assistance.
Commenting on these statistics, Dr. Jenks and Mr.
Lauck, in " The Immigration Problem," say, " If we
attempt to discriminate among the different races, it
appears that it is among the immigrants of the earlier
* Reports of Immigration Commission, Doc. 665, including
1839 pages.
88 THE NEW AMERICA
period, or those coming from Northern Europe, that
we find apparently the largest number of cases of neg
lect or bad habits of the breadwinner.
" For example, among the South Italians, only 8.7
per cent give this cause, whereas the Irish give 20.9
per cent, the English 14 per cent, the Germans 15.7
per cent, the Norwegians 25.9 per cent. The Hebrews,
again as representatives of the later immigrants, give
12.6 per cent."
SANITARY CONDITIONS
Does the new immigration increase the unsanitary
condition of towns and cities?
The Immigration Commission made a thorough
study of the conditions prevailing in the poorer quar
ters inhabited by immigrants of various races, in the
seven cities, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago,
Buffalo, Cleveland and Milwaukee. The inquiry cov
ered over 10,200 households and over 51,000 indi
viduals.
The Commission reports : " The average conditions
were found materially better than had been anticipated.
Moreover, a comparison of the conditions in a great
city like New York or Chicago with those in some of
the smaller industrial centers, such as mining or manu
facturing towns, shows that average conditions as
respects overcrowding are very materially worse in
some of the small industrial towns than in the large
cities. . . .
" In the large cities much more frequently than is
generally thought, the population changes. New im-
TENDENCIES 89
migrants are attracted to these poorer residential quar
ters by the presence of friends or relatives and the
necessity of securing living quarters at the lowest pos
sible cost, but as their economic status improves after
living in this country for some time, they very gen
erally move to better surroundings. The undesirable
districts of the cities that are now inhabited largely
by recent immigrants were formerly populated by
persons of the earlier immigrant races. . . .
" In many instances, too, where deplorable condi
tions were found they were due in part, at any rate, to
circumstances over which the inhabitants have little
direct control, such as a poor water supply or unsanitary
drainage — matters that should be attended to by the
city authorities.
" While instances of extreme uncleanliness were
found, the care of the households as regards cleanli
ness and an attempt to live under proper conditions
was usually found unexpectedly good, about five-sixths
of all the families visited in the poorer quarters of these
large cities keeping their homes in reasonably good, or
fair condition."
Mr. E. A. Goldenweiser, expert in charge of City
Inquiry for the Commission, writes in The Survey of
January 7, 1911, "In connection with the prevailing
opinion about the filth, which is supposed to be the
natural element of the immigrant, it is an interesting
fact that while perhaps five-sixths of the blocks studied
justified this belief, so far as the appearance of the
street went, five-sixths of the interiors of the home
were found to be fairly clean, and two out of every five
were immaculate. When this is considered in connec-
90 THE NEW AMERICA
tion with the frequent inadequate water supply, the
dark halls and the large number of families living in
close proximity, the responsibility for uncleanliness
and unsanitary conditions is largely shifted from the
immigrants to the landlords, and to the municipal
authorities who spare no expense in sprinkling oil to
save the wealthy automobilists from the dust, but are
very economical when it comes to keeping the poorer
streets in a habitable condition. The water supply, the
drainage, and the condition of the pavement are also
outside the jurisdiction of the tenants; and yet their
neglect results in bad conditions for which the resident
of the crowded districts is blamed."
AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS
Has the new immigration any tendency to develop
the agricultural resources of America?
The old immigration had a choice of homesteads in
the Middle West at lower rates than can be found to
day. But great areas of unoccupied territory farther
West await development; and smaller areas farther
East, once occupied, are open for new cultiva
tion.
The Immigration Commission investigated more
than one hundred and fifty rural groups, including
Italians, Hebrews, Poles, Bohemians and Portuguese, in
nineteen states. Mr. Alexander E. Cance, in charge of
that part of the Report of the Commission, says in The
Survey of January 7, 1911, "Of the forty or more
Italian communities visited in thirteen states, the old
est and largest groups are the berry- and truck-growers
TENDENCIES 91
on the pine barrens of New Jersey. . . . Both north
and south Italians are landowners at Vineland, and
Hammonton is one of the most prominent south Italian
settlements east of the Rocky Mountains. In origin
and development both are typically unassisted colonies,
whose progress has been continuous since the seventies,
and whose numbers have been augmented chiefly
from abroad. These groups number perhaps twelve
hundred families of Italian origin, and here veritably
the ' magic of property' has 'turned sand into gold.'
The hundreds of little berry farms, vineyards, or sweet
potato or pepper fields, which make these Italian com
munities real oases in a waste of sand and lowland, bear
unmistakable testimony to the ability of the much-
maligned south Italian to create wealth and to make
progress materially, morally and politically under rural
conditions.
" At Vineland the original immigration set in from
northern Italy, but more recently a large number of
Sicilians and other south Italians have come. . . .
The first arrivals have passed well beyond the experi
mental and pioneer stages and many of them are
pointed out as the most substantial citizens in the com
munity. They are prosperous, influential and intelli
gent farmers and proprietors. . . . There is a fourth
class, the American-born Italian, who represents the
new Italian farmer, born on the soil he cultivates.
He is the progressive farmer who dares to try new
machinery, new equipment, new varieties and new
methods. He subscribes to an agricultural paper and
belongs to a farmers' co-operative society. . . .
" In New England, especially near Providence,
92 THE NEW AMERICA
south Italians have been engaged in truck and vege
table farming for many years. As market gardening
has increased in importance, the Providence settlement
has been augmented by defections from the industrial
population in the vicinity. . . .
" [In New York] the south Italian colony at Cana-
stota is typical. . . . American owners were unwilling
to undertake the clearing, hence the land was purchased
cheaply; and since an Italian raised his first crop of
onions in 1897 tne ^arm settlement, now called Onion
Town, has grown slowly but steadily. Economically
it is significant that there has been no displacement of
the old agricultural population; that the Italian has
developed new land — otherwise commercially unpro
ductive — and a new agricultural industry, and that he
has found this rival rural occupation more remunera
tive than his former employment on railroad or
canal. . . .
" Italian farming in the South covers a wide range
of products, widely diversified soils and climatic con
ditions, several forms of land tenure, and various sys
tems of culture. The north Italians among the moun
tains of western North Carolina practice a self-suffic
ing, diversified agriculture. . . .
" In the ' Delta ' both north and south Italian
cotton-tenants are teaching the cotton-growers how
valuable careful cultivation, kitchen gardens and small
store accounts may be to the cotton ' share hand.' In
the Ozarks Italians from the Sunnyside group have
taken up new land, planted orchards, and become suc
cessful apple and peach growers."
Russian, Polish, Greek, Italian, Swiss, Portuguese
TENDENCIES 93
and Armenians, all have been commended by repre
sentatives of various states as successful farmers.
WAGE EARNING
Mr. W. Jett Lauck, expert in charge of Industrial
Investigation for the Immigration Commission, writes
in The Survey of January 7, 1911, " The earnings of
the immigrant industrial workers, as well as of those
of native birth, in present-day industrial communities
are generally too small to permit the maintenance of an
independent form of family life.
" Of more than 22,000 wage-earners eighteen years
of age or over, who were studied by the Immigration
Commission in the general investigation of immigrants
in industries, the average annual earnings were only
$455; and in the case of many southern and eastern
European races the average was considerably less.
These meager earnings in the case of male heads of
families were supplemented by taking boarders or
lodgers into the households, or by having the children
go to work."
Can a Christian nation face this record without
shame ?
No one questions that the requirement of improved
steerage conditions is within the province of govern
ment. The improvement of housing conditions in all
dwellings which immigrants are to inhabit during a
much longer time than during their voyage, would seem
to be even more important.
Our government has adopted the expedient of re
quiring the immigrant to turn his pockets inside out
94 THE NEW AMERICA
and to allow the inspector to learn whether the cash
in hand is sufficient to prevent the probability of his
becoming a public charge. Is there any inherent im
possibility of the government's requiring the prospec
tive employer to open his payroll and to show that the
wages which he pays are sufficient to allow employes to
provide for themselves and their families with a rea
sonable degree of comfort, to prevent the necessity for
child-labor and for such wage earning on the part of
mothers as must compel them to neglect the care of
their children and their homes?
CRIMINALITY
Does the coming of the new immigration add to
the criminality of the New America? Much apprehen
sion has been expressed on this point.
The immigrant's " offenses against public policy "
are frequently only the result of ignorance. A peasant
from a rural district of Europe, unacquainted with the
regulations of city life, unable to read laws, pro
hibitions or notices, or even to understand the language
in which verbal orders are given, may fail to make
proper disposition of sewage, garbage and ashes, —
may undertake to peddle without a license, may resist
arrest, may fail to pay fines on demand, may be unable
to secure counsel speaking his language, and so, quite
uncomprehending and dumb, may be sentenced to im
prisonment, and yet be no criminal in any true sense of
the term.
In view of all these considerations, the fact that
the searching investigations of the great Federal Im-
TENDENCIES 95
migration Commission resulted in the conclusion that
" immigrants are no more inclined toward criminality,
on the whole, than are native Americans," may be con
sidered good testimony to the character of those who
are allowed to enter our gates. The testimony from
the same source that " statistics do indicate that the
children of immigrants commit crime more often
that the children of natives," is ominous for the
future.
There can be no dissent from the verdict that " the
measure of the national healthy development of a coun
try is not the extent of its investment of capital, its
output of products, or its exports or imports, unless
there is a corresponding economic opportunity afforded
to the citizen depending upon employment, for his
natural mental and moral development." Whether the
belief in this theory is so deep and strong and abiding
as to result in the requirement that employes shall be
given reasonable hours of work, and a living wage
which may include decent housing for themselves and
their families, without overwork on the part of women
and children, is a question of vital import, not only
to immigrants but to the nation that receives them.
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY
Four-fifths of the children brought into juvenile
courts in Chicago, and about the same proportion in
other large cities, are the children of foreigners. In
the phraseology of our time, character is produced by
heredity, environment and will. In the case of the
children of foreign-born parents in America, the hered-
96 THE NEW AMERICA
ity, as shown by the careful investigations of our
Immigration Commission, is not especially criminal.
What of environment? Who creates the environ
ment?
First, the public school, during from 15 to 30 of the
1 68 hours of each week. Sunday schools and various
child-welfare organizations claim perhaps three more
hours of the week. During the rest of his waking hours
the child spends his time in the street, in the alley, in the
back court, wherever he can find most diversion, w7hile
his parents and older brothers and sisters are busy
earning the bread for the next meal. He learns much
that escapes their weary eyes.
They may belong to the army of illiterates. Even
if they can read their own language, they may not have
learned English. The child soon stands shoulder to
shoulder with children of his own age in the public
school. He salutes the flag with a grace all his own
and sings, " My country, 'tis of thee," as lustily as anv
descendant of the author of our national hymn. With
every sense quickened by contact with the new environ
ment, he becomes acutely conscious of the difference
between " teacher " and his foreign-looking, foreign-
acting, foreign-speaking father and mother. His grow
ing conviction that " they do not understand, " not only
the new language, but also the new life, leads to the
rejection of their authority and influence. Keenly
sensitive to the criticisms of thoughtless companions,
he ceases to use the mother-tongue, and lives his own
life, a law unto himself outside of school. The juvenile
court record begins where parental influence ends.
Is there no other agency to intervene?
TENDENCIES 97
AMERICAN CHURCHES
In " The Immigration Problem," we find this sig
nificant statement, " One of the most striking features
of the whole immigration situation is the almost entire
indifference of the native churches to the immigrants,
and the general lack of religious and welfare work
among them. . . . The American churches are pass
ing by a great opportunity for social service."
At the present rate, this generation will see the
coming of about 33,000,000 immigrants to our shores.
About four-fifths of the new immigration speak some
other language than English. They all need English
for meeting the needs of daily life and for the main
tenance of helpful relations within their own homes as
well as with the communities in which they live.
Is the task of acquainting them with the English
language too great to be undertaken by those who be
lieve in the principles on which our Christian civiliza
tion is founded ? No more patriotic service, no greater
Christian service asks for volunteers to-day.
Of the immigrants from countries in which the Eng
lish language is not spoken, about four-fifths come from
countries in which the Bible is not an open book. It
has proved to be a wonderful inspirer of diverse na
tions. It is bringing a new day to China, to India,
to Japan.
Professor J. R. Green, the keen-eyed historian of
national life, tells us in his " Short History of the
English People," that " no greater change ever passed
over a nation than passed over England during the
years which parted the middle of the reign of Eliza-
98 THE NEW AMERICA
beth from the meeting of the Long Parliament. Eng
land became the people of a book, and that book was
the Bible. . . .
" As a mere literary monument, the English version
of the Bible remains the noblest example of the Eng
lish tongue. . . . But far greater than its effect on
literature or social phrase was the effect of the Bible
on the character of the people at large. ... A new
conception of life and of man superseded the old. A
new moral and religious impulse spread through every
class."
Has our New America any need of " a new moral
and religious impulse " ?
" That new religious consciousness which the great
historian describes as coming into England with the
coming of the Bible in the common speech of the people
was strongly dominant in those who crossed the sea to
make the New England and the new nation on these
shores. To-day the old Pilgrim stock is fading out
and is being replaced by immigrants who never have
known the experience which Professor Green so vividly
describes. To them, even as to the people of old Eng
land three hundred years ago, the teachings of the Bible
in the speech of everyday life would * fall on ears which
custom had not deadened to their force and beauty.'
" Protestant Christians have gloried in the independ
ence of church and state in America. Have Ameri
can churches realized their consequent obligation as
well as privilege, to supply in the life of the people that
which the state may fail to give? " *
At the end of the eleventh century, thousands of
* The Biblical World for January, 1913, page 28.
TENDENCIES 99
men, women and children enlisted in a crusade, " to
rescue the holy sepulcher in the East from the infidel."
In the beginning of the twentieth century millions
of men, women and children have come from the East
to find a vague Something Better than they have known.
If American Christians will see and respond to their
opportunity for personal service in giving of our best
to those who have come, the world will be enriched,
not by the possession of an empty tomb, but by the
inspiration of millions of Spirit-filled temples of Life.
V
ASIATIC INFLUENCES
Who taught you tender Bible tales
Of honey lands, of milk and wine?
Of happy, peaceful Palestine?
Of Jordan's holy harvest vales?
Who gave the patient Christ? I say,
Who gave your Christian creed? Yea, yea,
Who gave your very God to you ?
Your Jew ! Your Jew ! Your hated Jew !
JOAQUIN MILLER,
in " Russia's Ingratitude."
Though East be East, though West be West,
The world they form is one;
Alike the aims of human kind,
The goal when all is done.
P. H. DODGE,
of Keiogijiku Universitj.
ASIATIC INFLUENCES
THE unity of the human family is to be found —
or not found — in North America. Ours is the
only continent which in any large way is com
posed of all continents, excepting South America.
North America itself contributes the least. There is
a slight native element in the United States. It is
larger in Canada, while in the West Indies it was
exterminated. But in the six independent republics
between our southern boundary and our Panama Canal
zone it greatly predominates. The continent of Africa
has made a conspicuous contribution, numerically
larger than any other except Europe. The materials
of our country and our continent are mainly from Eu
rope. The contribution of Asia is little noticed as
such but is most noteworthy. Asiatic elements are
much larger than most people think. In the year end
ing June 30, 1912, more than twenty-one thousand
people from Asia landed in the United States. The
Orient is here. In the vast temple of American life
which has been rising without human design the time
has come for us to observe its Orientation. " And,
behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the
way of the East."
103
104 THE NEW AMERICA
OUR BIBLE AND OUR SAVIOUR
It must not be forgotten that the fundamental litera
ture of America is not American, nor African, nor
even European, but Asiatic. The English language,
the metaphors of common speech, the structural lines
of thought, the basic conceptions of American life, are
given us through the translation of sixty-six booklets
originating every one of them in Asia.
Not only is our fundamental literature Asiatic, but
so also is our fundamental faith. " The father of the
faithful " was a wandering Asiatic sheik. The God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our God. Not only
are Joseph and Moses and David our heroes, but Isaiah
and John and Paul are our inspiration. Most of all,
the supreme center of the divine revelation to us is in
One who was primarily not American, or European,
but Asiatic. He became, indeed, the Son of Man —
man at large. But he was first of all a Son of Asia.
Out of a long Asiatic line he sprang. In Asia he was
born, in Asia he was reared, in Asia he hungered and
thirsted. There he was filled with righteousness.
There he was tempted and overcame. He was never
outside of Asia. It was on that continent that he
spake as no man ever spake. There he started man
kind on a new course of evolution. On one of the
hilltops of Asia he was crucified, his blood mingling
with the soil of Asia and fertilizing it for the highest
products of human history. There are many mighty
streams of influence in America to-day, but far and
away the most potent of them all are those which have
come to us out of Asia. Let no one forget this when
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 105
he looks into the face of a Jew or a Syrian, when he
thinks of a Chinese or a Japanese inhabitant of
America.
A distinguished editor said that we could not expect
an occidental religion like Christianity to lay hold of
the Orientals who come to us. Such an absurd state
ment shows to what extent race prejudice can make
even a large-minded, highly-gifted student of human
affairs stone-blind to the best-known facts of history.
It is well within the facts to say that the life of the
Pilgrims on the Mayflower was not merely colored
but was completely dominated by Asiatic influences.
That has been true of the best life of America to this
hour.
RETURN CURRENTS
Return currents toward Asia began to flow in a
decided stream one hundred years ago, when the cul
tured son of a minister in old Plymouth, Mass.,
Adoniram Judson, went with a choice group of young
Americans to take the faith of the Orient back to its
own continent. The stream of American influence has
deepened and widened. Half a century ago Commo
dore Perry opened Japan to the world. Secretary Hay
and men of his type have shown China that we seek
its integrity and welfare. To-day more than five thou
sand of the finest American men and women are liv
ing in Asia for its good, and our flag is floating over
sixteen hundred islands of Asia. The American con
science is so alive to its obligations that we are obliged
at least to allege that we are in the Philippines for the
uplift of the Filipinos. We are now avowedly " a
106 THE NEW AMERICA
world power " with no expectation of diminishing
influence in Asia. The relationships are mutual.
Forces inflow as well as outflow. We must not exult
in influencing Asia without expecting Asia to influ
ence us.
HEBREWS
Consider Western Asia first. Although they have
come through Europe the Jews are Asiatic. Probably
the same may be said of all Europeans, if we go back
far enough in ancestry. With many of the peoples
coming to us from Southeastern Europe their Asiatic
origin is not remote. That is one reason, perhaps, why
this new contingent among us brings new problems.
But the Jews are Asiatic not only in origin but also in
the language which every Jewish boy learns to read and
write, in the regulation of their daily food, in a large
part of the customs which dominate their lives, both
physical and mental. They have persistently kept
themselves a distinct and a distinguished Asiatic race
in spite of the massive and cruel forces which would
have submerged or at least merged any occidental
breed of humanity. We have in the United States
more than one million eight hundred thousand of these
thoroughbred Asiatics. Nine hundred thousand have
come in the last ten years. They are marked factors
in the commercial life of every city and town. In the
metropolis of America they are one-fifth of the popula
tion. One-half of the Jews of the country live within
the horizon of the Metropolitan tower. They are fore
most in philanthropy as well as in many lines of busi
ness. They take a large and high place in great uni-
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 107
versities. One of them was recently a candidate for
governor of the Empire State and had in his following
many of the most thoughtful citizens of every race and
creed.
These Asiatics in America are avowedly not Chris
tians. They are to be a decided factor in the future
of the country. Who can measure the variety, the
complexity and the immensity of our obligations to
these kinsmen of Mendelssohn and Disraeli, yea, of
Moses and of Jesus Christ?
SYRIANS
In this connection, turning to the peoples coming
directly from Asia to America, it is natural to think
first of the Syrians. They are of the same Semitic
stock as the Israelites and of a near branch of that
stock. Their country is next to the Holy Land itself,
almost a part of it. A Semitic emigrant of old who
passed through their country " went out, not knowing
whither he went." That has been true of not a few
who have come to this country. On the slopes of
Syrian Lebanon the writer was told of some neighbors
who were overheard discussing at what point in
America they had better land, should it be Chicago
or Brazil. Thousands have found their way to the
United States. The first village to send many was
Zaleh, on the summit of the pass over the Lebanon
range between Damascus and Beirut. They began to
come in the eighties. So many are here now that they
are sending back to Zaleh $500 a day, it is said. The
108 THE NEW AMERICA
inhabitants of that place may well have their own
interpretation of the verse,
" There shall be abundance of grain in the earth upon the top
of the mountains;
The fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon :
And they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth."
From all Syria they are coming at the rate of over
five thousand a year. About one thousand a year
go back to Syria. In spite of all who have returned
during the last thirty years, some seventy thousand
Syrians are now in the United States, according to
conservative estimate; many say one hundred thousand.
ARMENIANS
The other leading people in America from Western
Asia are the Armenians. They, too, had knowledge
of the Oriental Saviour firsthand, or nearly so. Tradi
tion claims a letter to their king from Jesus himself.
They were possessed of literature and culture when the
Angles and Saxons were untutored barbarians. Ar
menians have been coming to our country for many
years. During the last five years twenty thousand
have come. They have been driven by the " Armen
ian atrocities " of the Turks and have been drawn by
our liberties as well as by our opportunities. Estimates
of the number in this country now range from fifty
to one hundred fifty thousand. Their percentage of
illiteracy is less than half that reported by the Syrians,
and the percentage procuring naturalization more than
twice as great.
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 109
TURKS
While Syrians and Armenians are the two peoples
coming from Western Asia in sufficient numbers to
have separate mention in the immigration tables of
the government, two thousand came in 1911-12 from
other portions of Turkey in Asia. Some of these are
Asiatic Greeks, but many of them are true Asiatics, in
cluding hundreds of actual Turks. In fact the latter,
even though they come from Turkey in Europe, belong
to the group which we are now considering. In the
five years from 1907 to 1912, six thousand four hun
dred Turks have come to this country. They belong
to the Mongolian division of the human race and so
carry our thought naturally toward their cousins on
the other side of the Asiatic continent.
CHINESE
Under Genghis Khan and his successors, for a whole
century, eastern and western Mongols were united in
one government. In the last half of the thirteenth
century there was free intercourse between the Far
East and Europe. In the last half of the nineteenth
century, and since, eastern Mongolians have been com
ing to America. Our present study is not concerned
with the desirability of this but with the fact and its
possible issues in the establishment of the kingdom of
God on earth. In 1853, twenty thousand Chinese hav
ing come the previous year, a great meeting of San
Francisco's representative citizens was held, and the
following resolution was unanimously adopted :
110 THE NEW AMERICA
" Resolved : That we regard with pleasure the pres
ence of great numbers of these people among us, as
affording the best opportunity of doing them good,
and through them of exerting our influence upon their
native land."
Although their welcome was soon reversed and the
stream of Oriental immigrants was largely turned back
after a time, there were still 70,944 Chinese in the
United States according to the census of 1910. That
year 1,449 landed here from China. In 1911 it was
1,307; in 1912, 1,765. They are scattered through the
whole country. There are half as many in New York
as in San Francisco. There is hardly a town of any
size without some of them.
JAPANESE
Since the discouragement of Chinese immigration,
the Japanese have been coming in larger numbers, al
though their coming is carefully limited by the govern
ment of Japan. In 1910, 3,759; in 1911, 4,575; in
1912, 6,114 Japanese arrived. The census of 1910
enumerated 71,722 in continental United States. The
Japanese Association of America reports for 1912 the
presence of 93,751 — 72,394 men, 12,285 women and
9,072 children. There are about 16,000 in the New
York consular district.
It is believed by those in the best position to know
that there are about 500 Koreans and about 5,500
Filipinos in the country.
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 111
EAST INDIANS
Recently a new contingent has appeared from south
ern Asia. In the last three years, 2,325 came from
the East Indies. There are said to be some 5,000 in
the United States, some forty-three hundred of them
being Hindus and the rest Mohammedans. Their il
literacy exceeds that of any other people coming to us.
OCCUPATIONS
While most of the Asiatics in our country are en
gaged in industrial pursuits of the simplest kind, con
siderable numbers have become landowners. In some
sections the Japanese are taking possession of the agri
cultural industries. In 1909, as laborers, they did prac
tically all the hand work in raising berries, a large part
of that in sugar-beet fields, and one-half of the work
in the vineyards of California. Moreover, they owned
16,449^4 acres of land and leased 137,233^4 acres
more. In Washington, Idaho and Colorado, they con
trolled 34,072 acres. In all the great cities, East as
well as West, there are Chinese and Japanese mer
chants.
Altogether, there are well toward three hundred
thousand Asiatics in the United States at the present
time; in other words, about the same number as of the
aboriginal Americans. This is in continental United
States, to which the present study is confined. Under
the flag in the Philippines are many thousands more,
and in the Hawaiian Islands they threaten to pre
dominate.
THE NEW AMERICA
There are great differences between our Asiatic and
European immigrants which need to be kept in mind.
Foremost is the difference in race relationship.
Nearly all the emigrants from Europe are more closely
akin to us than most of those from Asia. Even the
Slavic races are a part of the great Ayran family to
which we belong. With the exception of the Armen
ians and Hindus who have come here lately, the
Asiatics are from an entirely different branch of the
human race. Race feelings are among the deepest in
human nature. If we find it difficult to count the new
comers from southeastern Europe as our brothers how
much more difficult to count so those who come from
southeastern Asia?
Connected with this profound racial difference is a
great difference in tendency to assimilate. Japanese
of the second generation in considerable numbers show
power to become genuine Americans, but in the main
Asiatic immigrants are always aliens.
A third difference of great significance is in the mat
ter of permanency among us. Year by year about one-
third as many Europeans go back as come to this
country. Many of them, however, are returning to
Europe for only a visit. The vast majority of those
who come from Europe expect to make our country
their home. On the other hand a large part of those
who come from Asia come for only a temporary stay.
The fourth difference, closely connected with these
others, is in the interchange of ideas back and forth.
The great bulk of Europeans who come to us for
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 113
permanent residence infuse new color into American
thought and feeling, and quickly receive themselves
new color, often to the extent of an almost complete
transformation. These transfusions of life take place
far less with the Asiatics among us. Owing to all
these differences there is extremely little actual inter-
blending of the Asiatics with other Americans. There
has been among Asiatics and Americans only the
slightest tendency to the miscegenation which has been
so marked in the relation of Africans and Ameri
cans.
Except the Jews and the few Mohammedans, the
Europeans who come to us are Christian in name and
tradition. Both of these are, in fact, Asiatics and
both of them are monotheists, believers in the God of
Abraham. Most of the sacred books of the Jews are
the same as ours. The Asiatics, on the other hand,
who come to us from the Far East are polytheists and
have inherited no knowledge of Christ or even of the
one God of the Bible and the Koran. But in spite of all
these differences the interflow of Asiatic and American
life is very considerable.
ASIATIC INFLUENCE ON US
Note, first, the influence of our Asiatic visitors on
us. It manifests itself in various directions. In indus
trial affairs, labor questions of the Pacific Coast have
been deeply and violently complicated by the Oriental
immigrants. The political life of whole states and, to
some extent, of the nation, has been shaken by the pres
ence of these men from Asia, and still more, perhaps,
THE NEW AMERICA
by the fear of their presence. It would be impossible
to say how much the moral life of the country is
affected by the Orientals. It is believed by those who
are most fearful about them on the Pacific Coast that
they introduce vices which are characteristic of their
low standards of morality, and which draw not a few
Occidentals into their vile currents. The " white slave
traffic " is a somewhat metaphorical phrase, but the
yellow slave traffic has been literal. It has been con
ducted on a large scale and with written bills of sale.
The opium trade has been immense, but like the slave
trade, it has been mostly to gratify the Chinese them
selves.
It might be supposed that their influence on us in
religious matters would be a negligible quantity. On
the contrary, there are conspicuous embodiments of
Asiatic missionary activity at points all the way from
the Point Loma sanctum in southern California to the
Green Acre School in Maine.*
OUR INFLUENCE ON ASIA
Turn now from Asia's influence on us to consider
our influence on Asia, through the immigrants from
that continent. It is exerted, first of all, by our life.
What we are counts for most. They return to tell
of the prosperity of the country and what they have
learned of its institutions and of the real character of
the people. The Christian kindness which some of
them have met here in the strange and largely hostile
*For discussion of "Non-Christian Faiths in America" see
" Conservation of National Ideals." Fleming H. Revell Co.
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 115
country is keenly appreciated. That is what tells most.
The offset of this is the unkind treatment endured in
America. In addition to that they observe the wide
spread evils here.
Vast numbers in Asia know something of the actual
character of America, which poses as a Christian na
tion. Their judgment of it is a real day of judgment
for us. If the family life, the educational life and the
political life of America were completely Christian, and
the industrial life could be Christianized, our testimony
to Asia would be irresistible. In these days of world
wide intercourse, if even one commonwealth in the
United States were to become absolutely Christian the
continent of Asia would not long resist the argument
and would be clamoring for teachers from that common
wealth. If a single city, San Francisco, New York,
or any other, were to become entirely the city of God,
it would do more to bring Asia to the feet of Christ
than could be done by sending to Asia every preacher
in the United States. We must act in the light of this
indisputable fact while at the same time we act in the
light of another law of nature which scatters seeds
broadcast. Jesus sent the apostles into all the world
while the Promised Land itself was yet reeking with
wrong.
But our influence on Asia through the Asiatics among
us is exerted by our teaching as well as by our life.
We must tell them the good news of our Oriental
Saviour, the supreme inspiration to right living. The
immigrants from western Asia are commonly con
sidered in connection with those from Europe, and so
need not be reconsidered here.
116 THE NEW AMERICA
MISSIONS AMONG AMERICAN ORIENTALS *
By Local Churches. — The evangelizing activities
among immigrants from Eastern Asia are conducted
in three ways. First, by local churches. There are no
statistics to show how many Sunday schools or Bible
classes there are for Orientals. It was stated a few
years ago that in seventy cities there were seventy-five
Sunday schools for the Chinese, with an attendance
of 2,500. There are more than twenty schools in New
York City and immediate vicinity. In New England
there is an association of Chinese Sunday-school work
ers connected with forty-two schools. Hundreds of
Chinese have been brought to Christ through the
Chinese Sunday schools in various parts of the coun
try. The writer has had the privilege of seeing in his
own pastoral experience in western Pennsylvania and in
central Massachusetts numbers of Orientals studying
the Bible and dozens of them giving their hearts to
Christ. Some of these men, like Lee You in Pittsburg,
have shown by many years of unswerving loyalty to
Christ and His Church that their faith is genuine. The
majority have returned to China.
The scattered work of local churches makes no show
ing in statistical tables. One of the denominations
doing the largest amount of work among them (Pres
byterian) has recorded the number of Chinese com
municants in distinctively Chinese churches and in
American churches, showing almost as many in the
* On this and other topics in the present chapter see the mono
graph " The Oriental in America" by Geo. Warren Hinman.
New York, Missionary Education Movement, 1913. 5 cts.
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 117
latter as in the former. If this hold, as there is no
reason to doubt that it does, in other denominations,
nearly as much in the way of conversion is being ac
complished in this way as in the separate missions.
By Denominations. — Next comes the work con
ducted by denominational missions. It was begun in
1852 by the Presbyterians in San Francisco. Baptists
began there in 1854, Methodists in 1868, Congrega-
tionalists in 1870. There is a Chinese Methodist mis
sion in New York City and a Chinese Presbyterian
Church. Both New York and Philadelphia have
Chinese Baptist churches. The first organized work
for Japanese was in 1877. Most of the work for that
nationality has been done since 1900. In addition to
meetings for worship and preaching, and Sunday
schools, evening schools have been opened, boarding
schools established and rescue homes and Christian
boarding homes have been erected.
The open doorway through which the majority have
come into connection with the missions of both kinds
has been the need of learning the English language.
The Bible and extracts from it have been used as teach
ing material.*
The total number of Oriental members in the Ameri
can churches and the foreign-speaking churches at pres
ent is estimated as follows: Chinese, 2,000; Japanese,
2,600; Koreans, 400. A majority of the Koreans be
come Christians in Korea before coming to America.
It is believed that nearly ten thousand Chinese and
*Some of this material has now been put into pedagogical form
in "Early Stories and Songs for New Students of English" by
Mary Clark Barnes. Fleming H. Revell Co.
118 THE NEW AMERICA
Japanese have been baptized in America. There are
now about seventy-five organized missions for Chinese
and the same number for Japanese. Twenty of the
former and four of the latter are in Eastern parts of
the country.
By Interdenominational Agencies. — The third way
of seeking to Christianize Asiatics is through inter
denominational agencies. The Chinese Young Men's
Christian Association at first was modeled to a
considerable extent after the well-known Y.M.C.A.
It began as an interdenominational work. It has
developed, however, into a Young Men's Christian As
sociation under the care and conduct of the various
denominations. The American Bible Society has done
some excellent work among Orientals in America.
There is a joint work among the Japanese, the Dendo
Dan, which is moving along hopeful lines.
The organ of interdenominational action which is
of the greatest promise is the " Standing Committee of
American Workers among Orientals on the Pacific
Coast." In 1912 the Home Missions Council requested
this Committee to prepare a plan by which the work for
Orientals can be allotted among the denominations so
as to secure its more adequate accomplishment. The
Committee has done this with great care. On the north
Pacific coast also there was organized at Seattle (1912)
a " Council of Oriental-American Christian Workers/'
An adequate interdenominational building is proposed
and other closely co-operative undertakings.
Hitherto the needs have been largely unmet. In
the Consultations of the deputation from the Home
Missions Council during the winter of 1911-12, one
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 119
missionary administrator with years of experience in
China and then other years of experience on the Pacific
Coast, affirmed that not more than one Chinaman in ten
in the coast state where he lives had had the Gospel
brought to him in any adequate way. The deputation
was informed in another coast state that there are in
that state twenty-seven counties, with an average of two
hundred Chinamen in each, without any Christian work
of any kind for these Asiatics. In November, 1912, the
Standing Committee above mentioned declared that
" by recent surveys some fourteen thousand Chinese
and about the same number of Japanese are found to
be without any Christian opportunities. Among the
Hindus there are about four thousand."
Would the Orientals among us respond to missionary
endeavor in encouraging numbers if adequate effort
were made? The city of San Francisco is perhaps the
best provided of any place with missions to them.
Even in that city there is only one mission to each
nine hundred and fifty Chinese. Yet they have turned
to Christ in such numbers that they are communicants in
evangelical churches to a larger extent, in proportion
to numbers, than the white'people of that city.
Do American Christians really long for the conver
sion of Orientals, or is the interest only imaginary
while the thought is a glimmering mirage on the dis
tant horizon? Inside our own gate more than thirty
thousand flesh and blood heathens for whom we are
doing nothing ! Thousands more for whom we are do
ing but little! That little, however, counts. Owing
to the public spirit of the Morning Star Missionary
in New York, in helping the large Chinese community
120 THE NEW AMERICA
to secure and forward famine funds and in other
ways, he and his brother missionary have been
made associate members of the Chinese Merchants'
Association which meets every week, with a voice on
its floor. One result is that the joss house connected
with the rooms of the Merchants' Association has been
closed.
REFLEX INFLUENCE ON ASIA
The most striking aspect of the influence of Asiatics
in connection with the New America is the reflex influ
ence on Asia. It is known that Chinese Christians in
America have sent back for Christian work in China
at least fifty thousand dollars. If the unreported sums
be considered, and the gifts of the Japanese as well,
it is probable that one hundred thousand dollars would
be a moderate estimate. But the main thing is that
they have gone back themselves, the majority of them
to stay, nearly all of them for at least a long visit.
More than five thousand returned in 1912. That is
more in one year than the entire number of American
missionaries in those countries. This has been going
on for years, during some periods in far greater num
bers than now.
On Government. — It is more than a coincidence that
the portion of China that has been the fountain of demo
cratic influences which have at last captured the Chinese
government, is the region from which most of the
Chinese have come to America and to which they have
returned with some knowledge of American institu
tions. While laborers have come almost entirely from
southeastern China, students have come also from other
ASIATIC INFLUENCES
sections. Chinese students in America in their petition to
President Taft pleading for the recognition of the Re
public of China by the United States said, " In effecting
this remarkable transition of China from a corrupt mon
archy to a sound republic, many of the most prominent
leaders have been guided by the practical knowledge
and experience of the blessings of free government
which the hospitality and generosity of this land of
liberty have enabled them, in their student days, to
acquire within the precincts of its institutions of learn
ing; and all of them have been inspired by the luminous
example of the happy republic of the United States.
For this immeasurable service which the people of the
United States have rendered to the cause of republican
China, we avail ourselves of this opportunity to own
our debt of gratitude." Said a student in Chen Tung
University, Western China, to his American teacher,
referring to America as a whole, "What you are we
want to become."
On Missionary Work. — Chinese brought to Christ in
America have exerted a decisive influence in evan
gelizing China. Rev. Dr. Noyes, a missionary for a
third of a century in China, said, " Nearly all the
Chinese [laborers] in the United States come from
four districts in the Canton province. Twenty-five
years ago there was not a Christian chapel or school
in all that region. Now there are few places in these
districts where there is not a mission chapel within a
distance the Chinese can easily \valk. Of these chapels
we have six [now more]. Every one of these sites
was obtained by the help of Christians who had re
turned from California. Of the thirteen native assist-
123 THE NEW AMERICA
ants who have labored at these stations, six were con
verted in California, one in Australia and one received
his first serious impressions from a member of the
Chinese Church in California on the steamer crossing
the Pacific." Not long ago a Chinese pastor in New
York City for thirteen years said that when he was in
China recently he was in a meeting where fifty Chinese
preachers of the Gospel were gathered, and on taking
an expression it was found that twenty- five of them
were converted in the United States.
A Japanese inhabitant of the United States having
become an earnest Christian felt that he must carry
back the news to Japan, and help bring that nation to
Christ. After a few months he returned to America.
The present writer visited him just as he was in the
act of unpacking his trunk, and asked him why he had
returned to this country. He said that soon after
reaching Japan he received a letter from an old ac
quaintance living in one of the country towns of the
Empire, who asked him to come up there and help to
discredit and drive out two American women who were
teaching the villagers that in America there is a Jesus
religion which people throughout the world ought to
accept. His acquaintance said, " I told the people that
I lived in America for years and never heard of a Jesus
religion. You are just back from that country. If
you will come up here and confirm my statement we
can drive these fake religionists out of the town." My
friend said that he concluded that he could do most
for Japan by returning to America and doing every
thing in his power to make it impossible for Japanese
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 123
to live for years in this country without learning of
the Jesus religion.
On the Educated Classes. — When we turn to the
student class, we look upon forces of unmeasured po
tentiality for the regeneration of Asia. Nemoro
Utsurikawa in Education, November, 1912, mentions
by name more than thirty former Japanese students in
America who have since rendered distinguished serv
ice in Japan, and says that in 1911 there were in the
United States 869 Japanese students.
The Chinese students, in petitioning President Taft,
said that they represented 900 Chinese students then
in America. The Chinese government is sending here
about one hundred more students each year, giving
them an allowance of eight hundred dollars a year.
They are generally to remain here seven years. Ac
cording to an old theory of physiology that is long
enough to secure an entire transformation of their
bodies, so that when they return every ounce of their
substance will be American. However that may be,
they are here on purpose to imbibe American ideas and
ideals for the sake of regenerating China. In the
revolutionary Chinese government the First Assistant
Secretary of Foreign Affairs was the earnest Christian,
Wang, educated in the United States by the wise gen
erosity of two Baptist laymen of Lansing, Mich. Fei,
the private secretary of Dr. Sun Yat Sen, was educated
here by a Boston layman.
What would be the effect if the evangelical churches
were to begin at once to put sufficient endeavor into
the work for Asiatics now living in the United States
THE NEW AMERICA
to win the majority of them to the Christian faith?
It would simply mean that something like one hundred
and twenty-five thousand ambassadors of Christ in
the next few years would go from our shores to the Far
East. They would go with the language and habits of
the people to whom they go, their own to start with.
This would be far and away the most inexpensive and
at the same time the most effective method of inserting
the Gospel leaven into the Asiatic lump.
DR. SUN YAT SEN
The most striking instance of interdenominational
and intercontinental influence is in the case of the lead
ing factor in the recent revolution in China, Dr. Sun
Yat Sen. This man, who traveled largely on foot some
ten thousand miles throughout China, gathering and
indoctrinating groups of patriots with republican senti
ment, is the son of a man brought to Christ through an
English Church medical mission. He himself learned
the Christian way more perfectly through Congrega
tional workers in the Hawaiian Islands. Though he
was a medical student, not a student for the ministry, a
Chinese merchant in New York who knew Dr. Sun
intimately when he was in school says that it was the
habit of the young man, when Sunday came, to go
somewhere and conduct a gospel service. When he
was in the United States, after a reward of fifty thou
sand dollars had been placed on his head by the Chinese
government, he was protected for many weeks in the
Baptist Chinese mission in New York City. Remem-
ASIATIC INFLUENCES 125
bering the readiness with which Chinese assassins, for
a comparatively small consideration, take human life,
his peril can well be conceived. Wherever he went
upon the street two men workers went with him, one
on each side. Because peril lurked in darkness, as well
as in daylight, they slept one on either side of him at
night. It is not surprising to be told that his Christian
life deepened and quickened in this sacred and almost
tragic fellowship. When he returned to America, years
afterward, a distinguished reformer, many homes and
places of entertainment were opened for him, but the
New York dailies said that Sun Yat Sen was most
sure to be found at the Morning Star Mission.
THE CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIANITY
During the last half of the thirteenth century, Kubla
Khan with his capital at Pekin ruled over the most ex
tensive empire ever seen on earth. He was not only
the most extensive but also one of the most broad-
minded and progressive of the earth's rulers. He
begged the Pope of Rome to send him one hundred
missionaries. New popes were passing just then in
rapid succession. If they had done as requested, in
stead of spending their energies in ecclesiastical quib
bles and quarrels, and sent one hundred true-hearted
men to the Far East, China might have been a Chris
tian nation for the last five hundred years — half a mil
lennium — at least as Christian as many of the nations
of Christendom. Now at last another opportunity, and
one of even greater promise, has come. China and all
126 THE NEW AMERICA
the Far East are craving Western light. The Ruler
of the ages has put within our own parish circles, to
stay for a few years before returning to Asia, more
than one hundred thousand sons of the Orient, hun
dreds of them picked men. It is the most stupendous
challenge in human history.
VI
GUIDING AND INSPIRING
AGENCIES
Gifts differ, but the Spirit is the same; ways of serving
differ, yet the Master is the same; results differ, yet the God
who brings about every result is in every case the same.
If the foot says, ' Since I am not a hand, I do not belong to
the body,' it does not on that account cease to belong to the
body. Or if the ear says, ' Since I am not an eye, I do not
belong to the body,' it does not on that account cease to belong
to the body. If all the body were an eye, where would the
hearing be? If it were all hearing, where would the sense of
smell be? But in fact God has placed each individual part just
where he thought fit in the body.
PAUL.
VI
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES
IS the development of the New America to be left
entirely to the working of unconscious forces and
more or less blind economic factors? The high
est attainment of evolution is the guidance of the proc
ess. In the creation of our new and unprecedented
nation out of raw materials from all nations there are
a number of guiding and inspiring agencies. They all
work together, but for convenience of description may
be classified as State Agencies, Society Agencies and
Church Agencies. Their co-operation might well be
come more than as yet a deliberately planned and
closely articulated co-operation.
STATE AGENCIES
Selection. — The government has laws and an elabo
rate administrative system for sifting applicants for
admission. More than twenty causes, physical, mental
and moral, are assigned for debarring them. Many
think that the sieve ought to be finer. As it is, it de
barred sixteen thousand and fifty-seven in the year
ending June 30, 1912. In addition to that two thousand
eight hundred and fifty-three were returned who had
been allowed to enter. In 1909, over twenty-four thon-
129
130 THE NEW AMERICA
sand were debarred; in five years, ending with June,
1912, eighty- four thousand. In some months of recent
years the exclusions have been as high as three per
cent of the arrivals.
The continuous work of the United States in receiv
ing the new Americans is conducted by its Bureau of
Immigration in the Department of Commerce and
Labor. The administration of the government's regula
tions concerning the admission of approximately three
thousand people every day, on the average, through the
year, is a task of enormous proportions and of a
delicacy and difficulty almost incalculable. Every one
of the applicants is a person, and the center of the world
to himself. No servants of society in America deserve
the appreciative sympathy, the support and the prayers
of the lovers of God and men more than do our immi
gration officials. On them we place vast responsibility
as to the character of the New America. Under the
Commissioner-General there are nine Commissioners,
stationed at New York, Boston, Montreal, Philadel
phia, Baltimore, New Orleans, San Juan, San Fran
cisco and Seattle. There are twenty-three districts.
An inspector is in charge where there is no Commis
sioner resident. At the chief gateway, Ellis Island,
New York, there are six hundred and fifty govern
mental employes of all kinds. The staff of medical
inspectors is often seriously overtaxed. By rapid and
at the same time keen and kindly inspection they im
mediately pass the great majority of applicants.
Eighty per cent of those who come are kept at Ellis
Island only three hours. A few must be detained for
further inquiry.
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 131
There are various causes for detention on Ellis
Island. Many are waiting for friends to meet them. In
the crowded seasons as high as two thousand may be
lodged there. It is a vast temporary home as well as
si f ting-place. An important adjunct is the hospital
service. All about the buildings the following " Order
Concerning the Treatment of Immigrants " is conspicu
ously posted, " Immigrants shall be treated with kind
ness and civility by every one at Ellis Island. Neither
harsh language ncfr rough handling will be tolerated.
The Commissioner desires that any instance of dis
obedience of this order be brought immediately to his
attention."
Representatives of missionary and other philan
thropic aid societies have desks in the heart of the
building. Nothing is more significant of America's
good will and welcome to its new people. There are
thirty-nine of these accredited representatives, twenty-
five of them under avowedly religious auspices. The
workers speak with almost all known tongues and
render almost every kind of humane service.
Distribution. — The Bureau of Immigration has a
Division of Information which was instituted by act of
Congress as follows :
Correspondence shall be had with the proper officials of the
States and Territories and said division shall gather from all
available sources useful information regarding the resources,
products and physical characteristics of each State and Territory,
and shall publish such information in different languages and
distribute the publications among all admitted aliens who may
ask for such information at the immigrant stations of the United
States, and to such persons as may desire the same.
132 THE NEW AMERICA
In 1911 over one hundred thousand people received
the benefit of this agency, thirty thousand six hundred
fifty-nine being direct applicants.
Many of the Western states have departments de
voted to the securing of settlers, and other activities
bearing on immigration. Such departments are being
created in Eastern states to aid in the distribution of
immigration and in other vital services for them.
Naturalization. — The desire to become citizens varies
greatly with the nationality of the immigrant, ranging
all the way from less than six per cent of the Portu
guese to more than ninety-two per cent of the Swedes.
About seven-tenths of the men of the older immigra
tion (fifteen nationalities) have sought naturalization
and about three-tenths of the men of the newer immi
gration (twenty-five nationalities). In recent years
our government has greatly increased endeavor to make
the process of naturalization intelligent and judicial.
The courts having jurisdiction, about twenty-five hun
dred, are aided by the Division of Naturalization in the
Bureau of Immigration. It has examiners who are to
look into each case and present their findings to the
courts. Obviously this work of making American sov
ereigns ought to be guarded and strengthened to the
utmost. There are enough foreign-born in this country
to displace the entire population of nineteen of the
states. If so distributed, they could elect thirty-eight
United States senators.
Education. — This is the chief governmental activity
in behalf of the new Americans. Five of the forty-two
volumes issued by the recently organized Immigration
Commission are devoted to the school attendance and
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 133
progress of children of immigrants. Not only is the
school the chief agency of the state in Americaniza
tion, but that has now become the chief work of the
schools. It was found that 57.8 per cent of the pupils
in the public schools are children of foreign-born
fathers. Even in the cities where the percentage was
lowest, New Orleans and Kansas City, eighteen and
twenty-one out of every hundred were of direct Euro
pean parentage. It is typical and suggestive that the
highest percentage was just the same for an Eastern
and a Western city : Chelsea, Mass., and Duluth, Minn.,
74.1 per cent. New York City had 71.5 per cent, Chi
cago, 67.3 per cent, and Boston, 63.5 per cent.
In every school where many of these children attend
are found instances of the greatest mental alertness.
The children of eight nationalities, taken as a whole,
grade higher than the average children of native-
born white fathers, Finns ranking the highest. The
public schools are the hope of the New America more
even than was "the little red school-house" of old.
A teacher in a New York City public school has put
it in a way not easily forgotten, " Children of twenty-
nine nationalities enter our school; they go out one
nationality."
Public libraries as well as public schools give atten
tion, many of them large attention, to the needs of the
new Americans. They provide books in the languages
most used in the community. Large libraries have
special attendants for the non-English departments,
some of them rooms set apart for their use. Special
branches are opened in foreign-speaking neighbor
hoods. In Rochester, for example, in a neighborhood
THE NEW AMERICA
where there are between six and seven thousand Poles
and no public school within a radius of a mile, philan
thropic people organized an Institute for teaching Eng
lish and it was made the first Branch of the Rochester
Public Library.
Protection. — The Bureau of Industries and Immi
gration of the State of New York was established in
1910. Its purpose is thus summarized in the first an
nual report :
Believing that an alien's first impression, his first experiences
on arrival and his first contact with American institutions, are
the most lasting; that if his property rights and liberty are not
respected on arrival he cannot be expected to respect those of
people resident here; and that if he has not been given a square
deal he will later visit his early experiences upon his newly
arrived brothers ; the State has undertaken, so far as its facilities
permit, to make these early experiences forces for real civiliza
tion.
The exploitation of immigrants and of emigrants by
New York hotels and transfer companies, the out
rageous conditions of labor camps and many other
forms of wrong, are beginning to be righted. As al
ready noticed, a number of states have immigration
boards of one kind or another. The New York Bureau
has led in the formation of a National Conference of
Immigration and Labor Officials. Its objects are to
promote state activities of the kind just described. It
is significant of the fine purpose of this movement that
the Chief Investigator of the New York Bureau is a
woman. One of its special investigators was Miss
Carola Woerishoffer, a young woman of large wealth,
who gave herself in unstinted devotion to discerning
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 135
and remedying needs, even working for that purpose,
incognito, in laundries and other places of lowliest
service. Her life was lost in an accident while on a
mission of mercy for the Immigration Bureau. It
seemed to the writer peculiarly fitting that her body
should lie in humble state in the " Church of the In
carnation."
SOCIETY AGENCIES
There are many organizations doing important work
for immigrants which are official organs of neither
state nor church. Most of them may be grouped under
the following classes.
General Organizations. — There are a number of
these. The following are good examples : The North
American Civic League was organized in Boston in
1908. It has an active branch in New York and is ex
tending its work elsewhere. It seeks to educate the
older Americans to sustain appreciative relations with
the new Americans and to educate the latter in the
American speech and duties. It undertakes protec
tion and educational measures in preparation for co
operation with state agencies. It sends " domestic
educators " into neighborhoods and homes of immi
grants. One of its great services has been the organiza
tion, in 1912, of the Immigration Council, composed
of representatives of thirty-five societies engaged in
work for immigrants in New York City. This is for
the purpose of avoiding duplication of work and hav
ing a central bureau of information.
The Immigrants' Protective League of Chicago is an
efficient organization with the same aims as the North
136 THE NEW AMERICA
American Civic League. It is the intelligent, alert
and generous friend of the newcomer.
The Travelers' Aid Society " provides information,
advice, guidance and protection to all travelers irre
spective of age, race, creed, class or sex. It thereby
relieves suffering and prevents error, wrong, extortion
and crime at a time when the desired victim is most
accessible. The agents are not allowed to receive
gratuities or fees. Women agents of the Society, who
speak the different languages, meet trains and steamers
to aid and conduct inexperienced or confused travelers
any hour of the day or night to their destination within
the city, or to trains or steamers for other points. This
protection is continued by co-operation with other so
cieties or friends at terminal points, until the traveler is
known to have safely reached the proper destination.
When necessary the Society provides temporarily for
the traveler at headquarters." It has nineteen agents
regularly appointed to meet railroad trains and trans
atlantic steamers. These workers speak twenty-one
languages and many dialects. In 1911 they met at the
docks 11,563 people of forty-eight nationalities. From
the beginning of their work in 1905 to January ist,
1913, they had met 55,961 people, of sixty- four nation
alities. This organization especially meets the needs of
aliens who come as cabin passengers. The nationality
societies and many missionary societies also carry on
this line of work, for steerage passengers.
Nationality Societies. — At least twenty-nine nation
alities have organizations of their own which give con
siderable attention to the new arrivals of their re
spective nationalities, often meeting them on landing,
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 137
sometimes providing for their necessities afterward,
and in general throwing about them the social and
fraternal help which make them feel at home at once in
the new country. Some foreign governments grant
these organizations subsidies. Several nationalities
have more than one organization of the kind. In some
cases one is under Catholic and one under Protestant
auspices. Let the following statement of one of the
Italian societies serve as a sample :
It " employs agents to look after the needs of the
immigrants at Ellis Island; it runs an escort service,
by which competent persons are furnished, at nominal
cost, to take immigrants to their destination; it con
ducts an employment agency; it maintains an informa
tion bureau; it co-operates with the United States
authorities to enforce the immigration laws; it manages
labor camps for conductors; it wages war on all per
sons engaged in swindling immigrants; it is engaged
in breaking up the padrone system in all its forms;
and lastly and generally, it does all it can to help immi
grants, so that as soon as possible they may become
self-supporting and self-respecting citizens, a benefit
and not a detriment to this country."
The race making the best provision for its incoming
members is the Hebrew. They have nine general or
ganizations for this and kindred purposes. The Baron
de Hirsch Fund and the Educational Alliance do an
immense work for the comfort and Americanization of
the children of Israel.
Immigrant Homes. — One of the agencies which is
specially helpful to many at the outset of their Ameri
can experiences is the Immigrant Home which is under
138 THE NEW AMERICA
philanthropic management. There those who are not
met by friends, and are at a loss which way to turn,
may tarry for a short time at a reasonable expense and
be under protective influences. There are not less than
thirteen of these Homes in New York City. Some of
them are under racial and others under denominational
auspices. Other ports have such Homes. In one year
fifteen thousand immigrants were discharged to benevo
lent homes and aid societies.
Labor Unions. — Labor Unions have a large part to
play in the Americanization and assimilation of the
newcomers. The vast majority of those who come be
long to the laboring classes. Professor John R. Com
mons, in " Races and Immigrants in America," says,
' The labor Union is at present the strongest American
izing force. Before the organization of the Union
in the anthracite coal fields the 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
worshipers qf a given saint would organize a night
attack on the Polish worshipers 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 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 could come
in no other way, for the Union appeals to their neces
sities, while other forces appeal to their prejudices."
Young People's Associations. — Both the Young
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 139
Men's and the Young Women's Christian Associations
have departments for work among immigrant peoples.
These might be classed under church agencies but since
their work is chiefly without special religious emphasis
and along lines similar to those of the Jewish and other
organizations now being considered, they belong here
also. Jenks and Lauck, in " The Immigration Prob
lem," say, of one of these, " The Young Men's Chris
tian Association has for the past few years made efforts
to do work of a purely secular character among the
immigrant races." The Industrial Department of the
International Committee has twelve emigration secre
taries at ports of departure in Europe, and thirteen at
ports of entry in America, with three general secre
taries in the Immigration Section. In 1912 also there
were conducted classes to teach the English language
in twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia,
with 16,402 students. More than forty nationalities
are reached. The annual expenditures exclusively for
this work are about fifty thousand dollars.
The National Board of the Young Women's Chris
tian Association inaugurated definite work for immi
grant young women in October, 1910. The Secretary
in charge of the work reported in January, 1913, " All
the activities for the immigrant girls will go under the
title of ' The International Institute for Young Women
of the Young Women's Christian Association.' . . .
This scheme is actually in full operation in two cities; — •
the International Institute in New York City has a
budget of twenty thousand dollars. . . . The second
Institute is at Trenton, with a budget of three thou
sand dollars. . . . Aside from this protective and
140 THE NEW AMERICA
educational system, which aims to reach the present
immigration from central and southern Europe, fifty-
seven Associations in the country are maintaining in
their headquarters' buildings English classes for for
eigners." By April an institute had been opened in
Lawrence, Mass. Sixteen full-time workers were em
ployed in the three institutes.
Social Settlements. — Social settlements are among
the efficient agencies for the assimilation of foreigners.
A large feature of the work in every settlement where
there are foreigners is in their behalf. "Americans in
Process, a Settlement Study," by Robert A. Woods,
sets this forth in its very title. In " Twenty Years at
Hull House," Jane Addams devotes an entire chapter
to the subject and makes it a prominent feature in
nearly every other chapter. There are more than four
hundred social settlements in the United States. One
hundred sixty-three of these are under avowedly re
ligious auspices, Methodists, Episcopalians and Jews
being in the lead, with Roman Catholic and other de
nominations represented. Most of the settlements
conduct the work in a way to respect the religious
convictions of people of every race and creed. The
social settlements which nominally exclude religion
from their special work are nevertheless conducted un
der the motives which were energized in the world by
the ministry and teaching of Jesus Christ. Even when
the workers do not allow themselves the broader out
look on the universe which they wrould get from a
distinct recognition of this, and when those for whom
they work lose the deep and high inspiration which
has come into the human race in this way, they are
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 141
still, though somewhat blindly and narrowly, doing the
work of the kingdom of heaven on earth. A social
settlement is a collective reincarnation of the Spirit of
Christ.
CHURCH AGENCIES I I. INTERDENOMINATIONAL
Church agencies start with individuals, enlist a whole
church, spread throughout a denomination and secure
interdenominational co-operation. It may be more
helpful to review them in the reverse order :
The Home Missions Council. — Among its other en
deavors in co-ordinating the activities of the mission
boards this Council has had committees on wrork among
special groups of foreign-speaking people, and at its
annual meeting in 1913 established a Standing Com
mittee on Immigrant work. This committee may
be able to standardize forms of report so that in
future it will be possible to ascertain what is being-
done by denominational agencies in such a way as to
aggregate the data and present the work as a whole.
It is to be hoped that the Council may find ways of co
ordinating and distributing endeavor so as to eliminate
waste by competition, and especially so as to secure the
attention of some home mission agency or other to
every group of foreigners, so that the Gospel may be
given to all new Americans.
The Council of Women for Home Missions. — At
its annual meeting in December, 1912, this Council
created a Standing Committee on Home Mission In
terests among Immigrants, and has assigned to this
committee the duty of securing and keeping on file
THE NEW AMERICA
information regarding immigrants and the Christian
work being done on their behalf at ports of entry and
elsewhere, as well as of furthering through existing
agencies their Christian education and uplift. Through
this standing committee, the Council has taken over
the work inaugurated early in 1912 by the Fireside
Leagues in teaching English by means of Biblical ma
terial, and has assigned this special service to its sub
committee on English for Immigrants.
All students of immigration problems agree that the
help most needed by our non-English-speaking people
is help in learning the language of their adopted coun
try.
Since four-fifths of our immigrants of foreign speech
come from lands in which the Bible is not an open
book, it is of vital importance that they become ac
quainted with those Biblical ideals which have shaped
our national life. The conservation of our national
ideals depends upon acquainting the incoming tides of
life with those ideals.
The American Bible Society. — A large number of
the million and more Bibles and Bible portions in Eng
lish circulated in the United States in 1912 by this
Society, were for use by foreigners among us who are
learning to read our language in that best possible way.
In addition to that, about three hundred thousand
volumes were issued for use in the United States in
seventy other languages. Two hundred and fifty of the
colporteurs and others employed to distribute the Scrip
tures in this country gave attention largely to for
eigners. Of the four hundred thousand dollars spent
by the Society in publishing and distributing Bibles
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES
in the United States that year, one-fourth or more
should be accredited to work for foreigners.
Daily Vacation Bible Schools' Association. — College
men and women and theological seminary students are
engaged in teaching boys and girls the Bible and some
simple practical arts. In 1912 schools were held in
twenty- four cities, conducted by nine hundred and four
teachers with some fifty thousand boys and girls.
Eighty per cent of the pupils were of foreign parent
age. They were of many races and creeds. This work
means much in direct ministry to new Americans at
once, and still more in the training of college young
men and women for such ministry throughout their
lives.
The National Woman's Christian Temperance
Union. — This society has a Department of Work
among Foreign-speaking People. It lists in 1912 one
hundred and thirty-eight pieces of literature printed
in twenty foreign tongues. Its members are urged to
study the conditions of the foreign-speaking people in
their own communities, and to carry to them the gospel
of temperance.
The American Tract Society. — About half the work
of the Society in the United States is for the foreigners.
During the year ending March 31, 1912, it ministered
to the spiritual needs of forty different nationalities in
eighteen states. In doing this, fifty-three of the So
ciety's one hundred six colporteurs used foreign
tongues and distributed forty-six thousand volumes
printed in languages other than English. They sold
much, but the literature given away was listed at
$4,254.76. As with all organizations doing such work
144 THE NEW AMERICA
it is impossible to say how much of the entire outlay
is to be accredited to the work for foreigners, but
thirty thousand dollars for the year appears to be a
moderate estimate.
For whatever purpose these interdenominational or
ganizations were primarily formed, it has come to pass
in the present development of our country that an im
portant part of their work and an increasing part is
in behalf of the strangers within our gates.
CHURCH AGENCIES: n. — DENOMINATIONAL
As the forces of the kingdom of God at present are
organized by denominations, the largest effective action
comes in that way.
Proportion of Foreign-speaking Church Members. —
The United States census of religious bodies (1906)
shows that forty-one languages were in use and that
one hundred fourteen denominations had churches in
•which some foreign language was used. 24,594
churches with 8,394,229 members reported the use of
a foreign language alone or in addition to English,
that is, about one-fourth of all the church members
in the country. The bulk of these were in Roman
Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish and smaller religious bodies
transplanted from Europe and Asia. When we turn
to the more distinctively American religious bodies and
select those which mainly occupy the portion of the
country where immigrants abound, we get some sug
gestion of the ministry of these denominations to for
eigners. In the Northern Baptist Convention, Con-
gregationalists, Methodist Episcopal Church (North)
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 145
and Presbyterians of the United States of America
(North) five and one-half per cent of all the churches
use a foreign language. To these churches belong over
four per cent of all the communicants in the denomina
tional bodies named. They are practically all the re
sult of home mission activity. When the obstacles to
be overcome in bringing non-English-speaking peoples
into such radically American bodies are considered,
and when it is remembered that many of the earlier
churches of the kind have long since ceased to use a
foreign tongue, the census finding is a noteworthy
indication of missionary enterprise and success. The
four denominational bodies aggregated about six mil
lion members. The exact percentages of their mem
bers in churches using a foreign tongue were, Baptists
6.3, Congregationalists 5.4, Methodists 3.3, Presby
terians 3.5.
Missionary Forces. — Since 1906 there has been in
creasing activity in this phase of missions and several
denominations are taking new measures of efficiency.
There is, of course, no such costly and extensive ac
cumulation of data as that made by the government,
but facts furnished by denominational administrators
show more aspects of the missionary work and give us
a good suggestion of the state of the work at the begin
ning of 1913. The forty societies and boards which
have given us figures, employed in their foreign-speak
ing work thirty-four hundred missionaries and appro
priated to this work more than one and a half million
dollars during the year 1911-12. It appears that the
four denominations which are doing most in this
line of service — Congregational, Northern Baptist,
146 THE NEW AMERICA
Methodist and Presbyterian — counting self-supporting
as well as aided churches, have thirty-three hundred
churches and missions using other than the English
language. These churches have more than two hun
dred thousand members. There are more than two
thousand men giving their whole time to this work and
more than four hundred women. The annual expendi
ture for it aggregates more than two and a half million
dollars.
Adding to the somewhat complete account of the
four denominations only the society and board work
of the other denominations (all the data given), we dis
cover in all more than four thousand workers and an
expenditure of more than three million six hundred
thousand dollars. To get the grand total, however, we
must add to this the foreign-speaking sections of the
great Lutheran denomination. It has over eleven thou
sand foreign-speaking churches with seven thousand
ministers and nearly two million members.
Quality of Christians. — All who know many of the
foreign-speaking members in the churches under con
sideration recognize in them, as a whole, a type of
Christianity which is peculiarly refreshing. For the
most part there is a simplicity and fervor which may
well set an example to churches of the older American
stock. They promise to provide new blood which
American Christianity needs. Often they show an
apostolic quality which is inspiring. In the matter of
giving, for instance, it is safe to say that in proportion
to ability they give at least twice as much as their
brethren of long American lineage.
Two-fold Work. — The two sides of Christian minis-
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 147
try are emphasized more fully in work among foreign
ers than in the average work of the churches. Personal
evangelism is inevitably a decisive feature in winning
the immigrants to American Christianity. Social min
istry is also prominent in this work. The need of the
work may be seen from the following recent and con
crete record of work in one of the denominations which
is always strongly emphasizing personal evangelism.
It is from the Pittsburg District, Pennsylvania :
The Association has ten men and five women at work among
the foreign-speaking peoples, who give their whole time to it.
They reach people in ten different languages. They are beacon
lights pointing the way home to shipwrecked and storm-tossed
souls. Helpless children are given attention. Those unjustly
imposed upon by unscrupulous tradesmen and dishonest agen
cies are given advice and helped to their rightful protection.
The homeless are housed and the unemployed found employ
ment. These our brothers and sisters who labor with these
dependent ones count not their own pleasure and comfort, but
serve as angels of mercy to those who most need it.
This is applied Christianity — our Brother Blank starting out
before daylight and standing in the frosty morning interpreting
for his people to find them positions, or tramping from place to
place with them until employment has been found ; Miss Blank
working with fifty Syrian and Italian girls, teaching them the
first lessons of neatness, industry and Christlikeness, or in
another school working with Jewish, Russian, Lithuanian and
other children in the same manner.
Brother Blank has been able, along with his successful work
among the Russians, where a goodly number have been baptized,
to have two young Jews confess Christ publicly by being bap
tized. One of these is a prominent physician, the other also a
bright man.
'Supervision. — The denominational organizations
which are conducting missionary work among for
eigners are of six types. There are about twenty
148 THE NEW AMERICA
General Missionary Boards, including the entire
constituency of their respective denominations. Both
men and women are enlisted in this work. In
addition there are some ten Women's Boards engaged
in it, with missionaries of their own. They give much
attention to school work and visiting in the homes
of the new Americans. Several denominations have
also Publication Boards which provide literature for
non-English-speaking people, some of them sending out
colporteurs to disseminate the literature and present
the gospel. A number of Theological Seminaries have
departments devoted to foreign-speaking nationalities.
Some whole seminaries are given to that. There are
also a number of Training Schools for lay-workers,
many of the students of which are fitting themselves
for work among foreigners. Co-operating with the
general missionary organizations are State and other
District Bodies variously named according to the
church polity of their denomination. In some denomi
nations State Conventions do a large missionary work
which is becoming more and more in the eastern
portions of the country a work for foreign-speaking
peoples. This is generally conducted in close financial
and inspirational co-operation with the national agen
cies. The other special group of organizations is made
up of City Mission Societies. Inasmuch as there is a
strong tendency among immigrants to settle in cities,
and inasmuch as many of the larger cities are getting
to be composed mainly of citizens of foreign parentage,
a large part of the work of city mission societies is in
their behalf.
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 149
CHURCH AGENCIES. III. LOCAL CHURCHES
A large amount of work is done by the local churches
without subsidy from general organizations.
Institutional Churches. — Many churches, largely in
view of the conditions created by immigrants, have
established various social ministries. Socialized
church is perhaps a better name than institutional
church. Every denomination has some conspicuous
instances of this type of work. Many churches which
have not aspired to the title have entered into activities
of the kind mentioned. For example, in the late 90*3
the Fourth Avenue Baptist Church, Pittsburg, adopted
one phase after another, so that it went into the
twentieth century with a list of twenty different forms
of social ministry. A little later, at an International
Exposition in Belgium it received first award among
churches represented there as doing social work. In
addition to the conspicuous institutional churches like
St. George's, New York; Temple Baptist, Philadelphia;
Labor Temple, Presbyterian, New York; Morgan-
Memorial, Boston, and Halsted Street, Chicago, Meth
odist; First Congregational, Jersey City; there are
hundreds if not thousands of churches in the country
which are rendering social ministries largely with a
view to meeting the needs of immigrants.
Branch Churches and Missions. — Many churches
have established branches, organic parts of the church
yet with a distinctive existence, frequently with build
ings and one or more employed workers for each
branch, where a large amount of ministry to foreigners
is conducted. The Ninth Street Baptist Church, Cin-
150 THE NEW AMERICA
cinnati, Ohio, is a conspicuous instance of this kind of
ministry. A still larger number of churches minister
to immigrants through mission Sunday schools and
services.
Individual Service. — When it comes to the actual
doing of the work it is always and only done by
individuals. Machinery cannot evangelize nor as
similate human beings. The workers connected
with organizations are useful at last only through
their personality. In addition to all that is done
in connection with organizations, both great and
small, an innumerable multitude of Christian men and
women of the older American stock must actually show
the spirit of Christ to the newer Americans if they are
to be won to Him and in any degree to the old ideals of
our country. There is no larger service to be rendered
to America, to humanity and to our Lord, than for
Christian men and women to show by manner and by
deed that they count as brethren and welcome their
new neighbors from over the sea. Having first done
this in a general and unmistakable way, then to sit
down beside them, one by one, before an open Bible
and teach them at the same time the language which
they so much need and, through the Biblical material,
the ideas and spirit which have made the best of the
nation what it is, this is one of the most God-like
services in which any follower of Christ can engage.
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE
In the new day of the free circulation of humanity
over the globe, population, like water seeking its level,
GUIDING AND INSPIRING AGENCIES 151
will have a strong and ever stronger tendency to come
to equilibrium, filling all unoccupied spaces. Three
hundred million souls may find a home in the United
States without crowding together as much as people
are crowded even now in some of the prosperous coun
tries of the world. In the eastern sections of America
large cities, even whole states, now have two-thirds
of their people of foreign-born parentage. It is truly
a New America in which we live — as new as it was
in the days of the Pilgrims. In the West the condition
is still more acute. On the western half of the con
tinental United States, according to the census of 1910,
only 13 per cent of the population of the whole country
dwelt, but 1 8 per cent of the foreign-born of the whole
country. Not only is the proportion of foreigners
greater than in the country at large, but the institutions
and traditions of life being less firmly established and
the forces of evangelical religion being fewer, the bear
ing of the foreign element is far more decisive.
This relative condition is likely to increase rather
than diminish. Heretofore the great cost of two or
three thousand miles of railroad transit from the At
lantic ports of entry has largely prevented direct
European migration to the Pacific slope. With the
opening of the Panama Canal that prohibition is re
moved. The possibilities of population on the west
ern side of the continent are not matters of conjecture
but of demonstration. One of the nine republics of
North America, that of El Salvador, has only a Pacific
Ocean seaboard. Though it is densely populated it is
one of the most prosperous of the North American
sisterhood of republics, next to our own. The State
152 THE NEW AMERICA
of California can easily support as many people per
square mile. When it does it \vill have forty million
souls. According to the Salvadorean standard the
continental United States might have eight hundred
and fifty million inhabitants, or one-half the present
estimated population of the entire globe.
The world-neighbors are actually dropping in here,
not one by one, now and then, but two every minute
day and night, year in and year out. Are we giving
them adequate Christian welcome or anything like it?
Then, too, they are going back to the Old World every
year three hundred thousand strong. What impression
do they carry from us as to our Lord — as to the real
Master of us? Is it Christ or Mammon? What a
matchless chance is here for the redemption of the Old
World and the whole world ! There was never any
thing like it before since Jesus rose with scarred hands
above the slopes of Olivet and sent His voice ringing
down the ages, " Make disciples of all the nations.''
APPENDIX
(PREPARED BY LEMUEL CALL BARNES)
TABLE I
Foreign-speaking Work of
HOME MISSION SOCIETIES AND BOARDS*
(In Continental United States only and not including work for
American Indians.)
1912
LUTHERAN t
Mission- Amount
aries Expended
Uoard of Home Missions of the Gen
eral Synod of the Ev. Lutheran
Church in the U. S Baltimore 30 $ 8,570.00
Woman's Home and Foreign Mis
sionary Society of the Gen. Synod
of the Ev. Lutheran Church in
the U. S Springfield, Ohio 4 2,000.00
The General Council of the Ev.
Lutheran Church in North Amer
ica Philadelphia 278 1 14,236.52
(Practically the whole work of the follow
ing general bodies is caring for unchurched
immigrants of the Lutheran faith, but the
figures given are of what might strictly be
called their Home Missions.)
German Missouri Synod St. Louis, Mo. 363
Synod of Wisconsin, Minnesota and
Michigan Milwaukee 369
Joint Synod of Ohio Columbus, Ohio 400
Norwegian Ev. Lutheran Synod of
America Norway Lake, Minn. 115 40,000.00
Hauge's Norwegian Lutheran Synod
of America 20 14,000.00
United Norwegian Lutheran Church
in America St. Paul, Minn. 100 44,000.00
The Norwegian Free Church Minneapolis, Minn.
1,679 $225,806.52
* All Boards doing work in continental U. S. were asked to give data.
Several ^replied that they are not doing this kind of work. A number of the
Women's Boards are strictly auxiliary, and so give no data apart from
those of their general denominational boards.
t The alphabetical order is departed from in putting the Lutheran first.
This is not only because in several respects it is naturally the first to be
thought of in connection with Protestant work among Europeans, but also
because the figures in this table for all the other denominations are only
for missionary societies and boards, while for Lutherans the figures are
partly for such strictly missionary agencies and partly for entire Lutheran
153
154
APPENDIX
A rvwnvTTTCf Mission- Amount
ADVENTIST aries Expended
Seventh-day AdvcntistMissionBoard. Washington, D. C. 34 $ 10,509.00
BAPTIST
American Baptist Home Mission So
ciety New York, N. Y. 282 60,709.80
Woman's American Baptist Home
Mission Society Chicago, 111. 108 50,000.00
American Baptist Publication So
ciety Philadelphia, Pa, 39 20,443.3$
Home Mission Board of the South
ern Baptist Convention Atlanta, Ga.
Woman's Baptist Missionary Union . Atlanta, Ga. 19 9,ooo.oo>
Scandinavian Independent Baptist
Denomination Britt, la. 6 3,000.00
CHRISTIAN
Woman's Board for Home Missions
of the Christian Church Dayton, Ohio I 1,000. oo>
CONGREGATIONAL
Congregational Home Missionary
Society New York, N. Y. 354 151,900.00
American Missionary Association. .. New York, N. Y. 43 17,650.00
Congregational Sunday-school and
Publication Society Boston, Mass. 9 1,870.00
Church Building Aid Society 27,900.00
Congregational Education Society... 21,570.00
DISCIPLES
American Christian Missionary So
ciety Cincinnati, Ohio 6 S,900.oo>
Christian Woman's Board of Mis
sions Indianapolis, Ind. 20 25»ooo.oo>
METHODIST *
Board of Home Missions and
Church Extension of the Metho
dist Episcopal Church Philadelphia, Fa. 800 276,350.00
Woman's Home Missionary Society
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Cincinnati, Ohio 79 94,040.00
Board of Missions of the Methodist
Episcopal Church (South) Nashville, Tenn. 176 26,500.00
Woman's Missionary Council, Home
Department M. E. Church (South) Nashville, Tenn. 57 51,791.9$
MORAVIAN
Society of the United Brethren for
Propagating the Gospel Bethlehem, Pa. 6 3,365.00
PENTECOSTAL CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE
Gen. Missionary Board of the Pente
costal Church of the Nazarene. .. Chicago, 111. 6 2,ooo.oo>
PRESBYTERIAN
Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church in the U. S.
of America New York, N. Y. 284 1 53.332-°»
Woman's Board of Home Missions
of the Presbyterian Church in the
U. S. of America New York, N. Y. 24 33,773-i»
Board of Publication and Sunday-
school Work .. 20 27,001.00
Executive Committee of Home Mis
sions of thf Presbyterian Church
in the U. S. (South) Atlanta, Ga. 50 25,300.00
* The figures do not include deaconesses, of which there are more than
i. ooo in service, a large proportion of them doing city mission work among
foreigners.
APPENDIX
Board of Home Missions of the
United Presbyterian Church of
North America Pittsburg, Pa.
Woman's Gen. Missionary Society
of the United Presbyterian Church
of North America Pittsburg, Pa.
Central Board of Missions of the
Reformed Presbyterian Church. .. Pittsburg, Pa.
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL
Domestic and Foreign Missionary
Society of the Protestant Epis
copal Church in the U. S. of
America New York, N. Y.
REFORMED
Board of Domestic Missions of the
Reformed Church in America. ... New York, N. Y.
Woman's Board of Domestic Mis
sions of the Reformed Church in
America New York, N. Y.
Board of Home Missions, Reformed
Church in U. S Philadelphia, Pa.
Woman's Home and Foreign Mis
sionary Society of the Reformed
Church in the U. S General Synod
UNITED BRETHREN
Woman's Missionary Association of
the United Brethren in Christ. .. Huntington, Ind.
UNITED EVANGELICAL
Home and Foreign Missionary So
ciety of the United Evangelical
Church Penbrook, Pa.
KINDRED BODIES
American Bible Society
American Tract Society
Young Men's Christian Association
Young Women's Christian Association
Salvation Army
155
Mission- Amount
aries Expended
18 $15,300.00
96
a
16
4,398.oo
2,500.00
4,000.00
42,507.00
3,000.00
8,975.00
7,800.00
890.00
2,587 $1,191,375-26
200 $ 100,000.00
30,000.00
50,000.00
23,000.00
122,314.00
GRAND TOTALS t
Lutheran Bodies . .
Missionary Boards
Kindred Bodies .
514 $ 325.314.00
1,679 $ 225,806.52
.2,587 1,191.375.26
514 325,314.00
4,780 $1,742,495.78
* The figures given here are official estimates in rvart. They represent
only work exclusively or chiefly for foreigners. All these organizations
have many more workers with corresponding outlay in part for foreigners.
t It must be borne in mind that this is only a small part of what the
evangelical churches are doing for immigrants. For example, the items in
this table amount to only one-seventh of the work of Northern Baptists for
immigrants shown in Ta'ble II. In addition to that, vast amounts of work
by all denominations in this field are not subject to tabulation. But if
the above ascertained aggregate should be multiplied by only seven it would
give a total of ten million dollars.
156
APPENDIX
TABLE II
Foreign-speaking Work of
DENOMINATIONS (AVAILABLE SAMPLES)
Among Specified Nationalities
Table I showed the work of general Home Mission Societies
and Boards in only two particulars. Table II shows the entire
work in nine particulars among nationalities reached by the de
nominations named, including both work sustained by various
agencies and self-supporting work. The tables are incomplete in
spite of all the pains taken. Additions and corrections are so
licited. It should be especially remembered that the church
members given are only those in the foreign-speaking churches.
There are large numbers, perhaps as many more, in English-
speaking churches.
CONGREGATIONALISTS
Nationality
(
Albanian
I s
"c-2
§1
i
Members
c/i
i/5
</i
£
Salaried
" Men
Annual
* Expend.
I
5*S
HI
1909
•S3 «
11 1
wu cw
Armenian
Bohemian
Chinese
29
28
20
501
868
256
6
8
22
277
555
14
'!
16
9,762
8,831
7,733
1883
1887
1890
I 20
S2-J*
Dano-Norweg . .
Bo
3,000
S2O
81
24
700
933
55
24
36,250
7 436
1849
1888
I X
French
g
45O
8
250
6
3.500
1876
226
12 891
I 8d7
j
g
16
2 8t;6
180?
Indian
I 3OI
797
Italian
21
I,2O7
1800
j e
Japanese
18
S - 7 J
Polish .
I 8OO
Portuguese ....
Spanish
4
38
2
i!
8
2
1,087
775
1909
1897
I I
j j
Syrian
Welsh
I
•17
23
•j e
56
I
600
1908
1848
Slovak
8
216
Croatian
Persian
60
850
Swede-Finn. . . .
Hindu
20
20
I
600
1907
Turkish
*
62
•»o
I
8 72O
7 8">4
Mexican
S
266
1882
Bulgarian
I
1.500
1888
724 33.389 316 14,191 392 $419.862
20 656
APPENDIX
157
NORTHERN BAPTISTS
Nationality
Bohemian . .
Churche
and
30 Missions
J3 u
'J W3
II
456
3,874
2O9
417
723
30,746
264
13
1,494
73
481
2,040
*
233
340
45
25
380
24
27,929
16
•
J{1
.-s-g
We/)
7
54
5
7
10
355
13
40
2
4
24
10
3
9
i
5
356
2
'3,
3
1,350
3,016
155
292
305
24,894
416
3,497
1,223
540
118
75
460
50
235
185
22,208
179
"***J! *
4
45
3
10
12
268
I
13
2
3
36
9
4
5
7
i
9
5
232
i
2
4
9
2
5
ii
2
I
6
2
I
2
3
3
7
3
5 ^ c
$ 6,361.00
43,313.23
8,450.00
5,392.00
10,591.00
327,614.94
75.00
17,450.00
150.00
24.724.74
1,700.00
600.00
5,500.00
25,234.00
5,950.00
2,720.00
2,300.00
4,700.00
1,092.00
7,700.00
4,700.00
351,847.02
1,586.73
|II
« bo^
UWvS
25
18
3
2
2
15
36
I
4
i
i
7
2
I
9
I
l/l
s!
310
98
21
55
26
ISO
4Si
10
80
ii
30
250
Danish ....
• • • 53
Chinese
French
. . • 24
ogo
Hungarian
Greek
... 19
Italian ....
18
Japanese ....
. * . 2
Lettish
Norwegian .
Polish
... 41
Portuguese .
Roumanian .
... 3
7
g
. . . 2
Slovak
T1
Spanish-speaking 7
Swedish .... it A
24
1,038 70,466 916 59,313 725 89 $860,751.66 128 1,580
PRESBYTERIANS, U. S. A.
Nationality
£ c
ill
B
1
Accessions
«l
o a
*c 2
Beneficence
3*1
M
Exam.
Certif. ^ ^o Boards ^tion
Bohemian ....
41
39
177
20
1,910
2,625
$ 1,800
$ 18,394
Other Slavic.
20
17
57
4
702
993
334
4,334
Magyar
(Hungarian) .
34
24
437
132
2,546
788
1,089
13,883
Italian
74
49
840
Qf
3,821
4,668
663
12,941
French
6
5
29
6
714
661
v-'O
633
9,594
Scandinavian .
i
9
93
40
12
448
Welsh
3"
m
6
20
158
60
45
2,570
Syrian
4
3
94
10
*"»;> / v
385
Armenian ....
5
4
34
13
327
388
4,074
Chinese
6
19
7
240
234
2,127
1,442
Japanese
9
4
26
12
393
79
28
2,096
Korean • . •
4
560
1,446
Persian
i
I
10
2
9W
75
307
Spanish
(Mexican) . .
44
44
132
37
1,507
973
503
5,108
German
139
137
915
61
14,401
17,592
26,106
216,841
394 341 2,691 399 27,466 29,213 $33.728 $293,863
158
APPENDIX
SUMMARY
Including several items not in the foregoing tables
123456 7
lil 1!
|l isg =i
"! 1 IJs l"i II
c/i ,£ c/;^S c/2^^ UW
3
Congregation-
alists
316 14,191 392 30 $ 419,862 $ 35,734
27 Languages. 724
Methodists *
(North)
8 Languages. 1,220 88,045 1,191 84,745 800 300 276,350
Northern
Baptists
24 Languages. 1,038 70,466 916 59,313 725 89 860,751 55,000
Presbyterians,
A.
15 Languages. 394 27,466
29,213 284 35 700,000 84,766
3,376 219,366 2,423 187,462 2,201 454 $2,256,963 $175,500
* It should be observed that the Methodist data in the first four columns
are for only the eight nationalities for which they have as yet compiled the
figures. The fifth and sixth columns give the entire number of foreign-
speaking salaried workers, but are estimates rather than statistics. The
seventh column is only the amount expended by the Board of Home Mis
sions. If the facts were ascertainable corresponding to those of the other
denominations, this item might be in the neighborhood of one million dollars.
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" On the Trail of the Immigrant," Edward A. Steiner. New
York : Fleming H. Revell Co., 1906.
" Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens," Emily Green Balch. New York:
Charities Publication Committee, 1910.
44 Promised Land, The," Mary Antin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1912.
41 Puritan in England, Holland and America, The," Douglas
Campbell. 2 vols. New York : Harper and Brothers, 1893.
44 Races and Immigrants in America," John R. Commons. New
York : The Macmillan Co., 1907.
44 Scum o' the Earth," Robert Haven Schauffler. Boston and
New York : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1912.
41 Syrians in the United States," Louise Seymour Houghton.
The Survey, July, August, September, 1911.
"Through the Mill," Al Priddy. Boston: The Pilgrim Press,
1911.
"Williams, Roger, The Pioneer of Religious Liberty," Oscar S.
Straus. New York : The Century Co., 1894.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HOME MISSIONS
JOHN T. PARIS Author of "Men Who Made Good"
The Alaskan Pathfinder
The Story of Sheldon Jackson for Boys. I2mo,
cloth, net $1.00.
The story of Sheldon Jackson will appear irresistibly to
every boy. Action from the time he was, as an infant,
rescued from a fire to his years' of strenuous rides through
the Rickies and his long years' of service in Alaska, per
meate every page of the book. Mr. Paris, with a sure hand,
tells the story of this apostle of the Western Indians in clear-
cut, incisive chapters which will hold the boy's attention
from first to last.
JOSEPH B. CLARK, D.D. The Story of
' American Home Missions
Leavening the Nation :
New and Revised Edition. International Leaders'
Library. 12010, cloth (postage ioc.), net 5oc.
This standard history of the Home Mission work of all
denominations in America, has been thoroughly revised and
brought up-to-date.
MARY CLARK BARNES and DR. LEMUEL C. BARNES
The New America
Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, I2mo,
cloth, net 5oc. (post. 7c.) ; paper 3pc. (post. Sc.).
This, the regular text-book for the coming year is on the
subject of immigration. The author is eminently fitted for
writing on this theme as she has been a worker among immi
grants, and has given much time to studying the problem.
LAURA GEROULD CRAIG
America, God's Melting Pot
Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, 121110,
paper, net 25c. (postage 4C.).
The subject chosen for study this year, Immigration, covers
so wide a field that it was thpught best to prepare a. supple
mental text book from an entirely different standpoint. The
author has written a "parable study" which deals more with
lessons and agencies than with issues and processes.
LEILA ALLEN DIMOCK
Comrades from Other Lands
Home Mission Junior Text Book. Illustrated,
12010, paper, net 25c. (postage 4c.).
This book is complementary to the last volume in this
course of study, Dr. Henry's SOME IMMIGRANT NEIGH
BORS which treated of the lives and occupations of foreign
ers in our cities. This latter tells what the immigrants are
doing in country indtistries. Teachers of children of from
twelve to sixteen will find here material to enlist the sym«
pathies and hold the interest of their scholars.
HOME MISSIONS
LEMUEL C. BARNES, P.P.
Elemental Forces in Home Missions
I2mo, cloth, net 750.
By the author of that popular missionary text-book, "TVo
Thousand Years of Missions Before Carey." Some of the
most important issues connected with the work of Christian
izing America are presented with a breadth, a clearness,
a force and a conviction that will give the reader a new
vision of the Home Mission opportunity and a new sense of
his responsibility.
JAMES F. LOVE, D D.
All. Cor S*t Horn Minion Beard Southern Baptist Convention
The Mission of Our Nation
T2mo, cloth, net $1.00.
"Doctor L,ove shows himself at once a historian and a
nrophet as he opens the book of the past and points out its
suggestion for the future. The reader is irresistibly carried
forward to the conclusions of the author. Interesting, illum
inating and inspiring." — Baptist Teacher,
MAR Y CLARK BARNES
Early Stories and Songs for New Students
of English
Illustrated, i6mo, cloth, net 6oc. ; paper, net 35c.
Dr. Edward A. Steiner says: "Not only practical but it
affords easy transition to the higher things. The Bible is a
wonderful primer, simple, yet wonderfully profound. I am
glad that it is the basis of your system of teaching English
to foreigners."
HOME MISSIONS— TEXT BOOKS
BRUCE K1NNEY, P.P.
Mormonism : The Islam of America
Home Mission Study Course. Illustrated, I2tno,
cloth, net SQC. ; paper, net 3oc.
Dr. Kinney treats the subject in a judicious way, avoid
ing denunciation or undue criticism. The facts of Mormon
history, doctrine and life are woven into a readable story
that is sure to hold the attention.
JOHN R. HENRY
Some Immigrant Neighbors
The Htfme Mission Junior Text Book. Illustrated,
I2mo, cloth, net 4oc. ; paper, net 25c.
The author is the pastor of "The Church of All Nations"
In New York City. He writes of many nationalities from his
own experience. Through his sympathetic portrayal the child
student will be drawn toward a neighborly feeling for hi*
little brothers of foreign speech.
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO 5O CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.
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