Aliens or Americans?Grose, Howard B. (Howard Benjamin)
Religion
Aliens or Americans?
Grose, Howard B. (Howard Benjamin)
Noncitizens -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration
We are sufficiently familiar with the older type, and do not need here
to dwell upon it. We know how large a part has been played in the
development of our national material enterprises by the Germans, the
English and Irish, the Scotch and Welsh, the Swedes and Norwegians.
Millions of them are among the loyal Americans of to-day. The Irish
originally came to perform the unskilled labor of America. Their women
made the domestics, and many of them still rule the American kitchen.
But the Irish men have moved up, into bosses and contractors, into the
stores and trades and professions, and especially into politics, until
they practically run the cities and have a lion's share of the
governmental positions. The Germans have always been among the best of
our immigrant population in intelligence, thrift, and other qualities
that make the German nation strong and stable. They have Germanized us
more than we have Americanized them. The Scandinavians have with
excellent judgment distributed themselves and gone largely into
agriculture. All these north of Europe peoples belong to a common
inheritance of principles and ideas, and all have found it natural to
assimilate into American life. America owes a large debt to them, as
they do to the land that has become their own by adoption.
[Sidenote: Necessity of Discrimination]
But what can be said about this new immigration? First let us see how
great the change in racial character has been, and then differentiate
these new races. It will not do to brand any race as a whole.
Discrimination is absolutely necessary if we are to deal with this
subject practically and justly. There are Italians and Italians, Slavs
and Slavs, just as there are all sorts of Irish, Germans, and Americans.
No race has a monopoly of either virtue or vice. This table will help us
to differentiate the millions of immigrants since 1820 as to race:
Netherlands 146,168
France 428,894
Switzerland 220,199
Denmark, Norway,
and Sweden 1,730,722
Italy 2,000,252
Japan 88,908
Germany 5,187,092
United Kingdom,
Great Britain
and Ireland 7,286,434
Russia 1,452,629
Countries not
specified 2,130,756
China 288,398
[Sidenote: A Remarkable Shifting]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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