residing in the same part of the country. In the northern states paupers in almshouses are twice as numerous relative to population as they are in the southern states, and this because the almshouse system of caring for paupers is far more developed in the North than in the South. The foreign-born have a proportion of paupers in almshouses larger than the native for much the same reason that the negroes have a smaller proportion than either of the other classes, namely, the negroes live where almshouses are few, the immigrants where they are many. This fact and an allowance for the lower average income of the foreign-born would sufficiently explain the fact that the proportion of foreign-born in the almshouse population is somewhat larger than in the population outside. But when we consider that more than nineteen-twentieths of the foreign-born in almshouses have been in the United States longer than ten years it cannot be claimed that recent immigrants are contributing disproportionately to the burden of pauperism. As to crime, when attention is confined to major, or serious, offenses, the proportion of foreign-born whites committed to prison is almost exactly the same as the proportion of native Iwhites of the same age. For example, among 100,000 native whites thirty to thirty-four years of age, forty-nine were committed to prison for serious offenses in 1904, and among the V same number of foreign-born white, forty-eight. IV. Lastly, a word regarding the objection that the immigrants are poorly distributed. The results of the preceding census I examined in an article on "The Distribution of Immigrants,' ," the main conclusions of which still seem to me sound. Doubtless they will not apply without considerable modification to the widely different conditions of the following decade. The distribution of the foreign-born, like that of the native population, is determined by the interplay of motives, largely economic, inviting to a change of residence and other motives, among which human inertia is important, leading to a retention of the present abode. The foreign-born population is probably more migratory within the country than the native population and responds more quickly to the suggestions of economic or other advantage. On the other hand, this class probably has fewer and less trustworthy sources of information. I see little objection to the government's gathering reports and disseminating 1 "Quarterly Journal of Economics, 20:523-546, August, 1906. news for the purpose of aiding in the wise distribution of our population, whether native or of foreign birth, but I do not anticipate much effect from such governmental activities. What is the evidence that it is not to the advantage of our recent immigrants to stay as long as they do in our northeastern states and our large cities, where people of their own kind are congregated and can help, far more effectively than the government, their first steps toward American citizenship? The one serious objection to present immigration is its menace to American standards of wages and of living. This is the objection emphasized by the Immigration Commission. The cost of rearing children in the United States is rapidly rising. In many, perhaps in most, cases it is simpler, speedier and cheaper to import labor than to breed it. The arguments in favor of more drastic restriction for this reason are strengthening with the increasing cost of living and of rearing children. The time may have come for more radical methods of restriction. In that case a heavy increase of the head tax so as to make the cost of producing laborers in other countries and importing them more nearly equal to what it now costs to rear children for the labor market in the United States seems to me the simplest and best method of protecting our wage-earning class from debasing competition. The American People Influence of Immigration on American Development. A new nation, according to an American writer on immigration who fears the danger of immigration, derives its whole character and has its whole future determined by its first settlers,1 a proposition with which I agree, as it confirms the result of my investigations that the character of America has been determined by its Puritan ancestry; but the corollary of his proposition-when subsequent immigration takes place on a scale large in relation to the total population, equally far-reaching changes may be made in the nation's institutions and ideals-is an assertion too dogmatic and not sufficiently sustained by the facts, so far at least as the United States is concerned, to be 1 Hall: "Immigration," p. 100. accepted without qualification. The institutions and ideals of a nation, the character and speech of a people, their morals and their customs, may be corrupted or improved by contact with or by being brought under subjection to a more virile or aggressive race, but mere numbers are not the determining factor. We have seen that the institutions and ideals of America are English, and although there was a simultaneous colonization of America by the English, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and the Swedes, it is only English speech and English customs and English ideals that have survived; we search in vain for any lasting impression that has been made on the speech of America, on its legal or political systems, on its concept of morality, on its literature or its customs by colonizers other than English; it is as if they had not existed; as if, similar to the Indians, they could not be assimilated, nor were they virile enough to impose their civilization upon the conquering white "immigrant." So far as the later immigration is concerned, that which began in the first decades of the nineteenth century and has continued, we are unable to find that it changed either the nation's institutions or ideals or that it has had the slightest effect upon its political system. The millions of foreigners who have settled in America and have become Americans have not modified by a hair's breadth the fundamental code that was given to the people by its first lawgivers. It required a great many years before the world would admit the truth of the seemingly paradoxical discovery made by Gresham that bad money drives out good, because to the ignorant it appeared that the reverse must be true; but now the law stands unchallenged. In the same way the world has for a long period of years believed that the socially lower immigrant debases the more highly civilized native-born; but this is a fallacy. The law of immigration—a law as exact in its operation as the law of Gresham in finance or of Newton in gravitation— can thus be briefly summarized: Where people of a lower order of civilization are brought in contact with a more numerous people, possessed of an advanced civilization, firmly planted in its own traditions, customs, and institutions, with a political system that permits the immigrant to enjoy equal political and social rights with the native-born, the effect is not to degrade the higher civilization but eventually to raise the lower. The effect of immigration, therefore, is not to drag down the native-born to the level of the immigrant, but to raise the immigrant to the level of the native-born.1 The ambition of the male immigrant is to marry the nativeborn, for that is one of the means to advance in the social scale. Before he can gratify his ambition, however, he must have raised himself out of his immediate surroundings and have something to offer the woman he would marry. He is the exceptional member of his class. He has physical or mental qualities that distinguish him from his fellow-immigrants. There is little if any desire on the part of the native-born to marry the immigrant, for that is a step downward in the social scale. Such marriages are marriages of passion and are rare. The effect of immigration, therefore, is to replenish and fortify the native stock by the process of selection on the male side. A high birth-rate is an indication of a low order of civilization. As a consequence of immigration the birth-rate of the immigrant is reduced until finally it falls to the normal level of the more civilized people into which the immigrant has been absorbed. The effect of immigration, therefore, is not to destroy civilization by an abnormal and harmful birth-rate, but to restrict both native and foreign births to the ratio that nature has determined will best conduce to the physical, intellectual, and social development of the race. The causes of immigration are poverty, denial of opportunity, and the hope of wealth; and the latter must be regarded as a relative term purely. It is early impressed on the immigrant that to succeed he must become a part of the people among whom he lives he must speak their tongue, for they will not speak his; he must imitate their habits; he must follow their customs. The sooner he ceases to be an immigrant, that is, a foreigner and a stranger, the sooner he reaches his goal. The effect of immigration, therefore, is not to engraft foreign speech, customs, and manners upon a people possessed of their own language, customs, and manners, nor to bastardize the language, customs, and manners of a superior civilization. The native-born children of immigrants learn more rapidly the language of their nativity than they acquire that of their 1 Author's italics. parents. Thrown from an early age in contact with the nativeborn, working for them in menial and subordinate positions, realizing the gulf that separates the native-born from the immigrant and that the native-born dominate, the child of the immigrant is unconsciously brought under native influences and is impelled to speak, to look, to dress, and in every way to imitate his superior. The ambition of the immigrant's child is to be absorbed into the people of whom he is one by birth, for his "foreignness" is not a source of pride, but a handicap to success and a career. He has no repugnance to this merging of his nationality, he does not attempt to resist it, but, on the contrary, he facilitates it by every means in his power. The effect of immigration, therefore, is not to perpetuate and increase the foreign element by the immigrant transmitting his speech and customs to his posterity, but is to merge the nativeborn children of immigrants into the native population. The immigrant is compelled to accept the least desirable and lowest remunerated employment, thus displacing the native-born, who are forced to seek work demanding more skill and commanding higher wages. The effect of immigration, therefore, is not to lower wages and create unemployment, but is to raise the social and industrial status of the native wage-earner. American Journal of Sociology. 18:391-7. November, 1912 Bird of Passage. W. B. Bailey By the term "bird of passage," as used in this article, is meant the male laborer who comes to the United States with the intention of earning and saving money while employed here, and who, satisfied with his competence or finding the opportunity for employment gone through the beginning of a period of industrial depression, returns home with his savings. Few of these laborers take all of their savings with them upon their departure, but in most cases out of their savings have been from time to time sending money to friends or relatives in the home country for their support, to pay off the mortgage on the home farm, to purchase land, or to improve the property already possessed. Improvements made with American money upon small farms are frequently seen in villages of Austria-Hungary and Italy. |