(a) Includes Wales and Great Britain not specified. According to William J. Bromwell’s _History of Emigration to the United States_, published in 1856 by Redfield of New York, 1,000,000 of this number were from Ireland, which is probably accurate. During and after the Irish famine large numbers of Irish who could not find money for the passage to the United States did find it possible to go to England to work in coal mines, factories, and in seasonal agricultural employment; the money secured from which enabled them to embark for the United States from various English ports, which explains Bromwell’s estimate. (b) Includes 777 from Azores and 5 from Greenland. (c) Immigrants from British North American Possessions and Mexico are not included since July 1, 1885. Author’s Note: Official statistics of immigration to the United States began in 1819, so that statements as to the number of aliens arriving prior to that time are largely guesswork. The “panic” of 1893 had the effect to turn the alien tide the other way—back to Europe. Official statistics as to aliens returning from the United States were not required by law until 1908. The quarter of a century which has passed since the character of alien arrivals to the United States beginning in the forties, changed so markedly in the decade of 1880 to 1890, is not long enough for accurate analysis of the economic, political and social influence on the United States of the coming of these newer races, so that the statistical records here given do not extend beyond 1892. THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK PRESCRIPT Who made America? Who made this land that swings its empire from the Atlantic to the Sea of Peace and from Snow to Fire—this realm of New Freedom, with Opportunity and Ideal unlimited? Now that its foundations are laid, deep but bare, there are those as always who would forget the humble builders, toiling wan mornings and blazing noons, and picture America as the last reasoned blossom of mighty ancestors; of those great and glorious world builders and rulers who know and see and do all things forever and ever, amen! How singular and blind! For the glory of the world is the possibilities of the commonplace and America is America even because it shows, as never before, the power of the common, ordinary, unlovely man. This is real democracy and not that vain and eternal striving to regard the world as the abiding place of exceptional genius with great black wastes of hereditary idiots. We who know may not forget but must forever spread the splendid sordid truth that out of the most lowly and persecuted of men, Man made America. And that what Man has here begun with all its want and imperfection, with all its magnificent promise and grotesque failure will some day blossom in the souls of the Lowly. CHAPTER I THE BLACK EXPLORERS How the Negro helped in the discovery of America and gave his ancient customs to the land.