But more important than this purely linguistic hostility, there is a deeper social enmity, and it urges the immigrant to change his name with even greater force. For a hundred years past all the heaviest and most degrading labor of the United States has been done by successive armies of foreigners, and so a concept of inferiority has come to be attached to mere foreignness. In addition, these newcomers, pressing upward steadily in the manner already described, have offered the native a formidable, and considering their lower standards of living, what has appeared to him to be an unfair competition on his own plane, and as a result a hatred born of disastrous rivalry has been added to his disdain. Our unmatchable vocabulary of derisive names for foreigners reveals the national attitude. The French /boche/, the German /hunyadi/ (for Hungarian),[20] and the old English /froggy/ (for Frenchman) seem lone and feeble beside our great repertoire: [Pg279] /dago/, /wop/, /guinea/, /kike/, /goose/, /mick/, /harp/,[21] /bohick/, /bohunk/, /square-head/, /greaser/, /canuck/, /spiggoty/,[22] /chink/, /polack/, /dutchie/, /scowegian/, /hunkie/ and /yellow-belly/. This disdain tends to pursue an immigrant with extraordinary rancor when he bears a name that is unmistakably foreign and hence difficult to the native, and open to his crude burlesque. Moreover, the general feeling penetrates the man himself, particularly if he be ignorant, and he comes to believe that his name is not only a handicap, but also intrinsically discreditable--that it wars subtly upon his worth and integrity.[23] This feeling, perhaps, accounted for a good many changes of surnames among Germans upon the entrance of the United States into the war. But in the majority of cases, of course, the changes so copiously reported--/e. g./, from /Bielefelder/ to /Benson/, and from /Pulvermacher/ to /Pullman/--were merely efforts at protective coloration. The immigrant, in a time of extraordinary suspicion and difficulty, tried to get rid of at least one handicap.[24] [Pg280]