Chapter IV: Introduction (1)

It would require a very long list of names to give specific mention of all those who have rendered substantial aid in gathering the information on which this volume is based. The Commissioner of Naturalization, Mr. Richard K. Campbell; the former Director of Citizenship, Mr. Raymond F. Crist, and the chief examiners under their direction, have done all in their power to afford information and other assistance. Several hundred judges of naturalization courts in all parts of the country, took pains to answer our questionnaire and personal letters on special questions. Students of immigration and naturalization problems have been ungrudging in their co-operation.

The tedious and painstaking work of compiling the information contained in more than 26,000 petitions for naturalization, analyzed in the statistical chapters of this book, was done more especially under the direction of Professor Raymond Moley, then at Western Reserve University, Cleveland; Hornell Hart, of Cincinnati; Professor S. C. Kohs, of Reed College, for Portland, Oregon; Professor T. T. Waterman, of the University of the state of Washington, for Seattle, and Professor L. H. Hawkins, of Clark University, for Worcester, Mass. Aside from the service of these volunteer assistants, thanks are due in more than perfunctory manner to the members of the staff of the Americanization Study who devoted long hours to this exacting task.

Professor Moley compiled most of the material used in the chapter on the legal aspects of citizenship, and afforded information of the utmost value woven into other parts of this volume.

The thanks of the author are due in particular to his personal associates in the work, Mr. Paul Lee Ellerbe, formerly Chief Naturalization Examiner at Denver, and Miss Elizabeth Miner King, then of the staff of the New York Evening Post, now Mrs. Harold Phelps Stokes, of Washington, D. C.

JOHN PALMER GAVIT

AMERICANS BY CHOICE

AMERICANS BY CHOICE

I

OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL

From the point of view of citizenship there are two kinds of Americans--those who are American involuntarily by birth, and those who are _American by choice_.

This book devotes itself to those who have become Americans not by birth, but of their own free will and accord, by that process of voluntarily adopting a fatherland known as Naturalization. It endeavors to tell generally what happens to them in that process, and something of what they do and contribute to our _political_ life after they have been admitted to active membership in our body politic.

The subject is one much talked about--especially since the beginning of the World War--and little understood save by those who administer, or who in some way profit by, the operation, the shortcomings, and confusions of the existing law and the system which has grown up under it. That system is handicapped and beclouded by public indifference and by the survival of ancient attitudes and limitations, and bedeviled by the theories and prejudices of persons and interests who, innocently or willfully--often with impeccable intentions--stand in the way of progress or adhere for various reasons to ideas and methods long since outgrown, or in the light of to-day actively mischievous.

THESE ARE OUR VOTERS!

It is a current fashion of unthinking persons, contemplating the seething masses of immigrants congested in our cities and in certain rural sections, beholding the polyglot store signs and newspapers, sensing the existence of languages, manners, and customs unfamiliar and perhaps grotesque and even outrageous to their own habits and ideas of propriety, and reflecting vaguely upon the real and supposed evils of our political methods and machinery, to exclaim:

“And these are the people who corrupt our politics! These are the voters who elect our presidents!”

Many who should know better indulge in such absurdities, and even cite statistics to support them. A characteristic manner of reasoning would read something like this:

“In 1910 there were 13,000,000 foreign-born persons in the United States, and only a little more than 3,000,000 of them were naturalized!”

Leaving the unreflecting hearer to forget that of the 13,000,000 only about half (6,646,817) were males of twenty-one years and over; that more than half a million (570,772) had declared their intention to become citizens; that there was no report as to the citizenship of more than 775,000; so that the alien population of voting age, and of the then voting sex, known to be unnaturalized, was only about one-sixth of the total foreign born, or 2,266,535. This was bad enough in all conscience, and the Woman-Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution of the United States certainly has aggravated it, since through it married immigrant women were made possible voters through the naturalization of their husbands. But nothing can be gained by exaggerating the facts, or constructing mare’s nests by inferences from false assumptions. It is worth while to examine the conditions, to observe the extent to which the foreign born actually do participate in our political processes, and on the basis of such facts as are available, to judge the effect that foreign birth does tend to have upon the quality of that participation.

There is no disposition here to overlook or minimize the menace to our social and civic life involved in the presence of vast masses of undigested, unassimilated population of whatever race or kind--even of our own people, herded in colonies, dominating large communities, illiterate as regards our history and ideals, ignorant of our language, traditions, and customs. It constitutes a social problem of great magnitude and intricacy--though probably by no means so menacing as it is our fashion to believe. But it is not one directly affecting our political life or the operation of our political machinery to any such degree as it is the custom to declaim. There is little substantial evidence in these days that the foreign-born voter, as such, is a source of corruption or other evil influence in our politics.

PRIMITIVE ATTITUDES TOWARD IMMIGRANTS

Whether it is called an instinct, native in animal psychology, or an inheritance of mental habit and tradition handed down from remote times of family and tribal necessity, the fact is that we all regard the stranger with a suspicion, diminishing perhaps as we broaden with years, experience, and culture, but never entirely lost. Exceedingly few are those great souls who have no trace of it. Especially if the stranger wears a differently colored skin, expresses his thought by unfamiliar vocal sounds and inflections, practices customs of clothing, eating, marriage, religion, different from our own; lives in houses of peculiar shape and use--these things all partake, for the average person, of the outrageous and the dangerous, and usually subtly offend those habits of group taste which we somehow feel to have their roots in essential morality and the nature of things.

From time immemorial, all states and communities have laid special disabilities and limitations upon the alien--all based ultimately upon this habitual suspicion of those who belong to another tribe or clan. As Edwin M. Borchard says:[1]

The legal position of the alien has in the progress of time
advanced from that of complete outlawry, in the days of early Rome
and the Germanic tribes, to that of practical assimilation with
nationals, at the present time. In the Twelve Tables of Rome, the
alien and enemy were classed together, the word “hostis” being
used interchangeably to designate both. Only the Roman citizen had
rights recognized in law.... The Germanic tribes, in the early
period, were hardly more hospitable to the alien than were the
Twelve Tables of the Romans.

With the extension of trade and travel, and especially with the upgrowth of the feudal system, however, the utility of intercourse with peaceable strangers, and the advantage of adding their personal prowess, capacity, and assets to the resources of the community, came to be more and more recognized, and the stranger within the gates was accorded an increasing measure of tolerance, not to say welcome. But this tolerance was at best of a very limited character; practically, it was not much more than a rigid systematizing of the ways of making the immigrant useful and contributory. It is not the province of this report to dilate upon this branch of the subject. Suffice it to say that to this day, over nearly the whole earth, the alien is still subject to marked limitations, and that the exploitation of him is neither a modern nor an American invention.

As for political rights, let alone any degree of participation in the functions of government, no nation ever has contemplated the possibility of such a thing--until a few of the American states, clamoring for population from any corner of humanity, offered virtually full political participation to the alien immediately upon his mere declaration of intention to apply for citizenship--some day! Until the excitement of the World War brought public attention to the whole question of the position and influence of the foreign born in America, this anomaly remained in force in at least a dozen states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, and Oregon. Since then it has been abolished by constitutional amendment or other legislation in all but two--Arkansas and Missouri.[2]

LEGAL POSITION OF THE ALIEN

Thus far, from the point of view of international law and custom, it has been left to each nation to regulate the privileges of, and the restrictions upon, the alien, with the exception that certain nations strong enough to enforce it have established in certain countries held by them to be less than fully “civilized,” the principle of _extra-territoriality_, by virtue of which their nationals must be tried before special tribunals supervised by representatives of their own nation. Generally speaking, and subject to the rule that aliens of all races must be treated alike under processes of law, a nation may deprive the alien of liberty of action, may prohibit or restrict his ownership of property, may forbid or delimit his employment in certain kinds of work or enterprises, and may expel and deport him, at its pleasure. In other words, the status and rights of an alien are determined almost absolutely by the municipal law in the country in which he is domiciled. The only limitations upon this power are those established by treaties, and by the general spread of humane ideas, and the growing feeling--discouraged, perhaps, but by no means halted, by the World War--of the solidarity of the human race.

In the United States, the rights of the alien include personal protection, protection of property already acquired, and the use of all means of redress and judicial protection enjoyed by citizens.[3]

The alien’s plight in this country has been complicated by the peculiar relation subsisting between the Federal government and that of the individual states. For it has frequently happened that the government of the United States has been practically unable to enforce the rights of aliens created by treaty when traversed by state law. On more than one occasion threatening diplomatic situations have been created by the existence of this condition.

This ancient feeling toward the alien, and the treatment, legal, extra-legal, and illegal, to which he has been subjected in respect of his person, his family, and his property, undoubtedly have affected substantially his sentiments toward this country. Disillusionment about the atmosphere and ways of the “Land of the Free” is responsible for our loss of the citizenship of many desirable immigrants. The man who will not submit quietly to injustice is of the material of which our best citizens from the beginning have been made. The kind of aliens who can accept without resentment some of the things to which those of foreign birth and speech have been subjected within our borders during very recent times, are not fit to be Americans![4]

WHAT IS AN “AMERICAN”?

We are concerned just now, however, with the alien, not in his general legal or social relations, but as material for active membership in our community as an American citizen, as a voting participant in the sovereignty held in this country by the people. As such, he comes to a position unique in all the world. It is not yet true--perhaps it will be very long before it can be true--that there is absolutely no bar to any person on account of race; for the law and its interpretations exclude from citizenship Chinese, Japanese, and certain people of India not regarded as “white”--although the blacks of Africa are expressly admitted. Nevertheless it may be said broadly that, regardless of race, the immigrant can come to America and win his way upon his own merits into the fellowship of what all the world calls “Americans.”

Now, what is “an American”? What is it that makes a nation of us if not a distinctive race? What is it that the immigrant joins, body and soul, when he becomes “an American”?

Every little while somebody arises with ashes upon his head and bemoans the threatened disappearance of what he is pleased to call “the American type.” He never describes it--it is exceedingly difficult to learn what may be meant by the phrase. This is not strange, for there is no such thing if a racial type is meant. There never has been any such thing.

Perhaps we know what the expression might mean in New England--a combination of English, Scotch, or Welsh, who in turn would be bred of Dane, Pict, and Scot, Saxon and Norman and Kelt, with perhaps a strain of French, or maybe of Dutch. In Pennsylvania very likely it would be English Quaker--or Plattdeutsch. The French-Spanish combination in the Gulf region, the Scandinavian or German in the Middle West and Northwest, the Spanish-Mexican along the Rio Grande and in Southern California, and so on, are “American” by a title as good as that of those who trace their descent from the Pilgrim Fathers.

John Graham Brooks[5] remarks that “our piebald millions” are now so interwoven with all that we are “that to silhouette the American becomes yearly more baffling.” Says he:

The early writers have no such misgivings.... In 1889 I met
a German correspondent who had been four times to the United
States.... He said he brought back from his first journey a
clearly conceived image of the American. He was “sharp-visaged,
nervous, lank, and restless.” After the second trip this group of
adjectives was abandoned. He saw so many people who were not lank
or nervous; so many were rotund and leisurely, that he rearranged
his classification, but still with confidence. After a third trip
he insisted that he could still describe our countrymen, but not
by external signs. He was driven to express them in terms of
character. The American was resourceful, inventive, and supreme
in the pursuit of material ends. “My fourth trip,” he said, “has
knocked out the final attempt with the others. I have thrown them
all over like a lot of rubbish. I don’t know what the American is,
and I don’t believe anyone else knows.”

Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, in an informal address at Columbia University, undertook, albeit somewhat casually, to point out the characteristics which should mark a good American. He must be loyal, must “play the game”; must have a local pride not only in the quality of his country but in his home community, feeling and exemplifying a moral and civic responsibility for the betterment of conditions actuated by a wise and constructive idealism. Recognizing, no doubt, in the very saying of this, that these things would mark the good citizen of _any_ nation, he protested that after all was said, and despite the difficulty of precise definition, there was something distinctive, perceptible, and, in fact, perceived by the discerning; real, however subtle and elusive, distinguishing the true American from all other folk--“a certain sensitiveness to the finer values of life; an admiration for these things.”

Well, certainly the ideal American is, and has, and does all of this; certainly all Americans ought to be, and have, and do all of it! But in all candor and fairness it must be acknowledged that it would be invidious and altogether insupportable to claim it or _any_ of it as in any proper sense racially distinctive of America.

THE AMERICAN HAS NO RACIAL MARKS

We cannot isolate any physical characteristics; we cannot segregate any particular racial descent; one may search in vain for any definable hereditary mental or spiritual characteristic that will fit or typify all, or even many, of the “piebald millions” who inhabit and vote, attain success and honor, and, at need, enlist or be conscripted for war, in the varied jurisdictions of our tremendous stretch of territory between the ancient French-Canadian colonies of Maine and the Philippines; between the Virgin Islands and Alaska. Even local adherence to our slogans of liberty, democracy, consent-of-the-governed, and all the rest of our ecstatic vocabulary, no longer insulates or distinguishes us in the world. The upspringing democracies of the Old World, to which we have given example and inspiration as well as emancipation from old autocracies, swear by all these phrases as exuberantly as we, and may even outstrip us in the political incarnation of the ideals which hitherto we have regarded as so peculiarly our own!

If, then, we can distinguish “the American” neither by any physical attribute of race nor by adherence to political forms and formulæ, what is there left for us to conserve and to boast about--as our very own?

Let us come straight to the fact that this absence of exclusive racial marks is the distinguishing physical characteristic of the American. True of him as of no other now or ever in the past, is the fact that he is, broadly speaking, the product of _all_ races. It is of our fundamental history and tradition from the beginning that in America all peoples may find destination, if not refuge, and upon a basis of virtual race equality mingle, and for good or ill, send down to posterity in a common stream their racial values--and their racial defects. Whether we like it or not, this is the fact. We are not a race, in any ethnic sense. At most, we are in the very early stages of becoming one.

Prof. Ulysses G. Weatherly, of Indiana University, said:[6]

Every great historical race is a composite of originally separate
elements merged into a unity whose ruling characteristic is an
increasing integration of culture rather than of blood. This
process of merging is believed by Gumplowicz to constitute the very
essence of world history.

And he quotes Gumplowicz, in _Der Rassencampf_, to this effect:

Throughout the whole history of men stretches a continuous process
of amalgamation which, beginning with the smallest primitive
synthetic groups and following a race-building law to us unknown,
binds together and amalgamates small, heterogenous groups into
even larger unities, into peoples, races, and nations, perpetually
bringing them into conflict against other similarly constituted
and amalgamated peoples, nations, and races, and through this
conflict into ever new fields of conquest and culture, which again
consolidates and amalgamates the heterogenous elements.

The American people has been and is being made by exactly this process. We are in the midst of the making of the “American.” It does not yet appear what he shall be, but one thing is certain, he is not to be of any particular racial type now distinguishable. Saxon, Teuton, and Kelt, Latin and Slav--to say nothing of any appreciable contribution by yellow and brown races as yet negligible in this aspect of the question--each of the races that we now know on this soil will have its share of “ancestorial” responsibility for the “typical American” that is to be.

NOT RACIAL, BUT CULTURAL

Leaving for the long future, then, the evolution of the hereditary type, is there so soon something “home grown,” some “integration of culture,” that is peculiarly our own? Every American knows in his heart that however subtle and elusive, however difficult of definition, there is something real that distinguishes “America.”

In the attempt to fix the boundaries for the new Poland, the Peace Conference sought in vain for some limits of language or of political unity on which to base their demarcation. It came down at last to a simple question:

“_Do you want to be Poles?_”

And the question was enough.

Who doubts the answer to the question: _Do you want to be American?_ There is something more than love of home, something higher than the liking of a cat for the warm place under the familiar stove, that stirs the heart of every normal American when he sees the Stars and Stripes. The alien who declares it his intention to become a citizen of the United States may not be able to put it in words, but he means, and he knows that he means, something real and vital, recognizes a substantial distinction, when he says that _he wants to be an American_!

There must be, there is, there has been always, in the midst of the racial chaos which to-day constitutes perhaps our greatest social problem, something that may be called nationally even if not yet racially _American_; something indigenous on this soil as on no other. It belongs to us. Up to a time beginning a quarter of a century ago, when the so-called “new immigration” from Southeastern Europe and southern Russia set in in full flood, and now anew in the experiences of the World War, it was and has again become, a thing shared by all of our racial groups and elements--_peculiarly American_. It answers the test set forth by Professor Weatherly in the paper already quoted, of the completion of the nationalizing process: “... when the things of the spirit are held in common and cherished by all, even if some specific ethnic or linguistic differences survive.” Or, in the words which he attributes to Renan:

To have a common glory in the past, a common will in the present;
to have done great things together, to desire to do still
greater--these are the essential conditions for being _a People_.

Professor Weatherly repeatedly emphasizes the great point--that “it is not sufficient that peoples should merely have undergone similar experiences” in order to be knit into a nation; “they must have undergone them _together_.” Most of the great modern nations, as he says, have passed through the same processes of social change, “but in actual adjustment to such change each has had its own separate career.”

Twenty-five years ago it was true that the term “American” meant one who, of whatever racial descent, represented something very definite, of tradition, experience, and achievement--and of promise, too--“a common glory in the past, a common will in the present”; “great things done together, and a desire to do still greater”; unity determined not by external facts alone, but by sentiment.

Now, dimly as we yet realize it, it is true again. A baptism of blood and suffering, of sacrifice and self-denial, and of common experience in a vast world emergency, and out of it a vision of better understanding and a great work before us to be done, have gone far to restore that unity of appreciation of “great things done _together_” and of will to do still greater which was our common glory--and was getting lost. We had, we have now, a right to be both proud and jealous of the heritage left us by our fathers of many races, and now watered by the blood of our own generation, and to look with concern, if not with dismay, upon what might portend a swallowing up of this moral, this sentimental unity, in a great inundation of newcomers, who, however well intending as individuals, have not shared our tradition and experience, and who seem not to have been fitted by any experience of their own to assimilate either the tradition of our past or our aspiration for the future.

ESSENTIALS OF “AMERICANISM”

There are essentials distinctively American upon which we can base our definition of “America” and typify her in the human being who by spirit, vision, and vigilance best represents our tradition and our aspiration. Such a definition will hold against the world--even against those of our own household who neither exemplify nor understand it. The sum total of these essentials is not paralleled now, nor in history, anywhere else on earth. For of America alone it may be said:

That however lamely and insufficiently we have lived up to it, _our country is traditionally the refuge for the oppressed of every land_.

That here the individual has found a fuller freedom to seek his happiness in his own way. More than any other nation, America has never recognized a political autocracy, has reckoned Man above every consideration of property, class, or dynasty.

That here only has _the individual male from the beginning been deemed the ultimate political unit_--“one man, one vote.” The country-wide adoption of Woman Suffrage extends this concept to include women.

That however crudely we have practiced it, we have aspired _to estimate essential justice and the common sense of right relationship--fair play between man and man--as the final standard and appeal of human conduct, over against every claim of precedent and authority_.

That from the outset of this nation, the distinguishing spirit of America has been _a protest against Militarism and the domination of the professional soldier, against compulsory military service in time of peace_. Our army and navy, always thought of as instrumentalities of last resort, reserved almost wholly for defense against aggression from without, have on principle been always under the control and direction of _civilians as such_, and in peace time have been recruited by voluntary enlistment. This one fact of freedom from military conscription has been the distinction of America which, more than any other thing, has attracted Europeans to our fellowship. They have fought for us and with us, but always with the American motive, embodied in the final great fact, which is America’s alone:

That when _we have gone to war, our civilians armed and fighting with the devotion, courage, and effectiveness inspired only by the sense of a righteous cause, it has always been for liberty_. At the beginning, in 1776, and again in 1812, we fought England to free ourselves. In 1845, despite the motive of the Slave Power to extend the area of slavery, so far as the motive of the people in general was concerned we were fighting Mexico to free our fellows in Texas. In 1861 we fought a great civil war to maintain our free Union and to liberate the negro slaves. In 1898 we fought Spain to free the Cubans, and notwithstanding this, our sole sin of imperialism, in the long run we shall have freed also the Filipinos. In 1917 we participated, no doubt decisively, in the struggle to free Europe from the threat of domination by the military autocracy of Germany. “To make the world safe for democracy”--that was the appeal which brought the hearts of the American people into the war. Of no other great nation can it be said that _it never went to war except for liberty_.

This is “America.” This ensemble of tradition and significance is what makes native and newcomer alike want to be an American. This is what stirs our hearts when we see the Stars and Stripes. We prize these things not alone because they are ours, not alone because in their power and glory they are peculiarly, exclusively American; but still more because they are worthy to be prized, and because they promise the ultimate incarnation of the dreams of men of good will since ever man first lifted his eyes from the ground and visioned Brotherhood.

II

NEW MEMBERS AND AN OLD GAME

It would be too much to say that the average immigrant from any country visions when he leaves his home the “America” outlined in the previous chapter, or even that he perceives it when, at some time after he arrives, he files his declaration of intention to seek citizenship. Doubtless in the ordinary case he comes merely to improve his personal, social, and economic condition; to put it bluntly, to get a better job. Nevertheless, we should do ourselves and our long-standing reputation in the world a great injustice if we did not recognize and take pride in the fact that the people of all races turn their faces hither not only with hope of opportunity to better their condition, but with a stirring of soul at the thought of what they believe awaits them in a land of wider liberty. That they do not always find us living up to our boast, so far as they are concerned, is the defect not of our tradition or, in the long run, of our intention, but of our practice.

At the outset the immigrant does not think about citizenship at all. The statistics gathered by this Study show conclusively that the average alien waits more than ten years before applying for citizenship. That even if he comes as early as sixteen he waits until he is twenty-eight before he files his final petition. And the vast majority of the men come between the ages of sixteen and thirty--just at the time of life when, it would seem, active participation in the political life of the country ought to be most appealing.

FACTORS IN IMMIGRATION

The alien does not come with any direct interest in citizenship. He comes to improve his status. And this motive has two aspects; the impulse is twofold--a push from behind and a pull from in front, sometimes one, usually both. The statistics displaying the fluctuations of what Prof. Frank J. Warne calls “The Tide of Immigration” are luminous in their reflection of this purely human fact. In order to see it stand forth, one must keep it vividly in mind that these tables of statistics are not mere exhibits of mathematical digits, but lists of human beings, inspired by motives precisely like our own. The 148,093 subjects of His Britannic Majesty--mostly Irish--who came to America in 1848 were, _each_ of them, a specific individual human soul, impelled by the fact that the potato famine, or whatnot else at home, interfered with the adequacy of his meals; and attracted by the belief that he would find things better in America. The one lone Russian recorded in that year presumably represented precisely the same interplay of motives. The heavy German immigration in 1852, 1853, and 1854 was made up of men, women, and children who found conditions intolerable because of the repressions ensuing upon the revolutionary movement of ’48. And so on. On the other hand, the shrinkages in the figures in various later periods, in a general way, coincide with the times of industrial depression, unemployment, etc., in this country; things were not so attractive here as to offer substantial improvement upon the situation at home.

The six sources whence we have derived the bulk of our new population are Great Britain and Ireland; the three Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia--in the seventy-eight years from 1840 down to and including 1918, when immigration virtually stopped owing to the conditions created by the World War. Immigration since then has been subject to influences so different from those prevailing before, and as yet so little understood, that intelligent comparisons would be perilous.[7]

Students of immigration have usually built their generalizations upon totals of inflow, frequently overlooking the striking disparity of time and numbers among the various racial groups. Yet there is much significance in this disparity. Professor Warne, for example, in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political Science_ (1920), in an analysis generally of the upward and downward curves of immigration from all countries during the century since 1820, says:

By studying the yearly figures ... and relating them to events of
industrial or economic history, we are able to understand what
is probably the most significant of all the operating forces or
influences at work behind this great movement of population across
the Atlantic. For illustration, the number of immigrant arrivals
strikingly decreased from nearly 482,000 in 1854 to 200,877 the
following year, a decrease of more than one-half. This falling
off reflected the effects of the greatest financial panic ever
experienced in the United States up to that time.

Well enough for a generalization based on totals; but it is not to be overlooked that at that very point the then comparatively small immigration from Italy more than doubled between 1853 and 1854, jumping from 535 to 1,263, and remained above 1,000 with the exception of one year, until 1860. Again Professor Warne:

The ensuing industrial depression was followed closely by the Civil
War, and it was not until 1873 that the yearly inflow again reached
as large a volume, the number being nearly 460,000.

But it was precisely during the hottest and most critical years of the Civil War that German immigration increased. It had been relatively low between 1854 and 1865 (in which latter year it was 58,153), but jumped in 1866 to 120,218, and (with the exception of 1871, when it fell to 82,554) remained high until and including 1873, when it almost touched 150,000. It would seem that something must have been going on in Germany to drive these people out against the adverse economic conditions prevailing here.

The year 1873 [continues Professor Warne] marks another panic, and
a striking decrease the following years in the number of alien
arrivals is again recorded.

But the Austrian, Italian, and Russian immigration, which had been relatively insignificant up to 1869 and 1870, was higher in 1870-75 than ever before, and with minor ups and downs increased more or less steadily up to the very high figures of the past two decades, which gave rise to the widely believed legend entitled, “The New Immigration.”

The question of means of livelihood, of a better job, is doubtless the chief factor, but it is not the only factor. Any job at all in a free country is better, for any man worth his salt, than a far better-paid job under conditions of oppression. The man who leaves his homeland to adventure even under adverse conditions, because he cannot tolerate political tyranny, used to be regarded _per se_ as fit for American citizenship. He is still fit, even though he belong to the traditional “New Immigration”; even though of late we have tended rather to discourage the idea that personal liberty is valuable in and of itself. It is still true that along with our fame as a land where economic opportunity is to be found, the men and women of other lands are attracted by what they still believe to be our atmosphere of liberty.

POLITICS WELCOMES THE IRISH

The Irish immigration was earliest in the field, and first to profit by the hit-or-miss methods of naturalization which prevailed in the old shiftless days. They occupied socially at the outset very much the same position that the “New Immigration” has occupied during the past twenty years; but the American politician, to whose mill any kind of a biped who might vote was grist, welcomed it, and quickly taught the Irishman the methods of the game.

How solidly the Irish were installed before the Germans began to arrive in large numbers appears in Table I, showing the two streams of immigration between 1820 and 1840. Prior to 1840 there was no appreciable inflow from any other countries. It should be added that it was not until 1854, and then only for that one year, that the German immigration overtook the Irish. It did not again equal it until 1867.

TABLE I

IMMIGRATION FROM IRELAND AND GERMANY EACH YEAR FROM 1820 TO 1840

=============================
YEAR | IRELAND | GERMANY
----------+---------+--------
1820 | 3,614 | 968
1821 | 1,518 | 383
1822 | 2,267 | 148
1823 | 1,908 | 183
1824 | 2,345 | 230
1825 | 4,888 | 450
1826 | 5,408 | 511
1827 | 9,766 | 432
1828 | 12,488 | 1,851
1829 | 7,415 | 597
1830 | 2,721 | 1,976
1831 | 5,772 | 2,413
1832 | 12,436 | 10,194
1833 | 8,648 | 6,988
1834 | 24,474 | 17,686
1835 | 20,927 | 8,311
1836 | 30,578 | 20,707
1837 | 28,508 | 23,740
1838 | 12,645 | 11,683
1839 | 23,963 | 21,028
1840 | 39,430 | 29,704
=============================

THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN DEMOCRATS

The traditional fidelity of the Irish to the Democratic party began forthwith. The elements in the population which were Whigs, and afterward became Republicans tended, on the whole, to be the more prosperous folk of the community; also they were largely of the Protestant faith. Very early in our political history, therefore, there came to be, to some extent, a division in which both social standing and religion played a part. Most of the Irish were poor, and nearly all of them were Roman Catholics. The Democratic party was rather the party of the poor and the foreign born, and when the great influx of Roman Catholic Irish injected also the religious issue, it was only natural that a kind of racial allegiance should attach the Irish to the Democratic party. The Know-Nothing and Native American agitations of the middle of the last century deepened the rift, and confirmed the Irish in their political faith.

Gustavus Myers says, in his _History of Tammany Hall_:[8]

About the year 1840 ... Tammany began to be ruled from the bottom
of the social stratum.... The policy of encouraging foreigners,
at first mildly started in 1823, was now developed into a system.
The Whigs antagonized the entrance of foreign-born citizens into
politics, and the Native American Party was organized expressly to
bar them almost entirely from the enjoyment of political rights.
The immigrant had no place to turn but Tammany Hall. In part to
assure itself this vote, the organization opened a bureau, a
modest beginning of what became a colossal department. An office
established in the Wigwam, to which specially paid agents or
organization runners brought the immigrant, drilled into him the
advantages of joining Tammany, and furnished him the means and
legal machinery needed to take out his naturalization papers....
Tammany took the immigrant in charge, cared for him, made him feel
that he was a human being with distinct political rights, and
converted him into a citizen. How sagacious this was, each year
revealed. Immigration soon poured in heavily, and there came a time
when the foreign vote outnumbered that of the native-born citizens.

It is true, but irrelevant, that in an earlier day Tammany had been as anti-foreign as anybody--originally it was decidedly aristocratic in tone. Myers recites how, on the night of April 24, 1817, two hundred Irishmen marched to the Wigwam “to impress upon the Committee the wisdom of nominating (for Congress) Thomas Addis Emmett, as well as other Irish Catholics on the Tammany ticket in the future.”

All this had long since become ancient history by 1840. Long before that time the Irish devotion to the Democratic party in general, and to Tammany Hall in particular, had become deeply rooted.

EARLY GERMANS BECAME REPUBLICANS

The Germans, who, as has been shown, formed the second great wave in the “tide of immigration,” began to come in formidable numbers about 1836, passing the 30,000 mark in 1845. While they were, on the whole, better educated and possibly more intelligent than the Irish, they were handicapped, as the Irish were not, by difference of language; so that for the practical purposes of the native American politician they were equally ignorant. And the mass of the immigrants of both races were peasants without experience in relation to political participation.

Very many of the Germans, however, had fled from the repressions at home preceding, accompanying, and following the revolutionary movements about 1848; they were to a great extent Protestants, and they were naturally opposed to slavery--though this is not to say that the Irish ever favored it. Generally speaking, Germans reacted favorably to the Republican party.

Both races took American politics as they found it. Let it not be supposed that corruption was the exclusive invention or hall mark of Tammany Hall! Even in England, at this time, politics was a dirty business. The Whigs did their best to beat Tammany at the game in which it had become expert. Myers says:[9]

In the fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and
indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were
handed to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two
hundred roughs were brought from Philadelphia, in different
divisions, each man receiving $22.... Ex-convicts distributed Whig
tickets and busily auctioneered. The cabins of all the vessels
along the wharves were ransacked, and every man, whether or not a
citizen or resident of New York, who could be wheedled into voting
a Whig ballot, was rushed to the polls and his vote smuggled in.

This was the election which made William H. Seward Governor of the state of New York!

EFFECTS OF THE GOLD CRAZE

The whole situation was intensified during the years when corruption reached its greatest heights by the conditions ensuing upon the discovery of gold in California. The port of New York welcomed ships from the west coast bringing gold, and ships from across the Atlantic bringing immigrants. The “bulge” in the curve of immigration from Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia in the period 1849-54 undoubtedly represents preponderantly the reaction abroad to the tales of gold to be found on the street corners of America.

And the immigrant stepped into an atmosphere of corruption in every field--including politics. The whole country was more or less money mad. The effect of the gold craze, as Myers (page 154) says, “was a still further lowering of the public tone; standards were generally lost sight of, and all means of ‘getting ahead’ came to be considered legitimate. Politics, trafficking in nominations and political influence, found it a most auspicious time.”

VAST NATURALIZATION FRAUDS

It is hard to realize now the public attitude of those old days on the subject of naturalization. There was a fabulous amount of virgin territory to be opened; new communities needed population, and especially muscle labor; lavish inducements, including the right to vote, were held out to anything in the form of a man who could be brought to help in the task. It was many years before citizenship came to be regarded as a precious thing, to be guarded with scrupulous vigilance. And as both of the great political parties were guilty of crimes against the ballot box, it was taken for granted that they were inevitable in politics.

The vexatious technicalities which now seem so unjust to many an applicant for citizenship are, after all, only reaction at the other extreme to the incredible laxity which characterized the process in the early years. The population of what was then New York City was only 515,547 in 1850; 813,669 in 1860; and 942,292 in 1870; but in the eight years, 1860-67, inclusive, more than 67,000 aliens were naturalized in that city alone. The naturalizations in New York City in each year from 1856 to 1867, inclusive, in only two courts--the Superior Court and the Court of Common Pleas--an average of more than 9,000 a year is shown in the following table:

TABLE II

NUMBER OF ALIENS NATURALIZED EACH YEAR FROM 1856 TO 1867 IN TWO
COURTS IN NEW YORK CITY{1}

======================================
YEAR NUMBER
--------------------------------------
1856 (Presidential election) 16,493
1857 8,991
1858 6,769
1859 7,636
1860 (Presidential election) 13,556
1861 3,903
1862 2,414
1863 2,633
1864 (Presidential election) 12,171
1865 7,428
1866 13,023
1867 15,476
======================================

[note 1: John I. Davenport, _The Wig and the Jimmy_, p. 12.]

These figures are taken from a curious pamphlet, published in 1869 by John I. Davenport, who was United States Commissioner and Chief Supervisor of Elections for the Southern District of New York, under the cryptic title, _The Wig and the Jimmy_, which tells in detail the story of the debauching of naturalization by these two courts. The year 1868, however, saw the scandal reach unprecedented heights. Says Mr. Davenport:[10]

... Notwithstanding that the yearly average of naturalizations
had been but about 9,000; that the greatest number naturalized in
a single year never reached 16,500; that three years had elapsed
since the close of the war in which 35,927 aliens had been made
citizens, a yearly average of 11,975, or an excess of 3,000 per
year above the annual average for twelve years; that the addition
of such excess to the diminished numbers naturalized in 1862,
1863, and 1864 would preserve the ratio, and account for those
who from fear of being drafted had refrained from applying during
those years of the war; that the rebellion had reduced the alien
population of New York City, many of whom enlisted, were killed,
died from disease, or after the war found homes elsewhere; and,
finally, that the yearly average of emigration (_sic_) from and
including 1847 to 1860--a period of 13 years--had been 197,435,
while for the four years from 1860 to 1863 inclusive--and none who
arrived subsequently could be legally naturalized in 1868--the
yearly average of alien arrivals had been but 100,962, or an
annual loss of one-half, yet orders were early in September passed
along the Democratic line to prepare on a gigantic scale for the
naturalization of aliens during the coming month. The Supreme
Court also determined for the first time to engage in the work
of making citizens. In accordance with this known determination,
there were printed for the use of the courts ... a total of 30,000
applications and 30,000 certificates for the Superior Court, and
75,000 applications and 39,000 certificates for the amateur court
[Supreme].

The Court of Common Pleas, which save for a year or two previous had done the larger share of the work of naturalization, did but little in 1868, its total for the year being 3,145, of which 1,645 were in October. Justice requires the further statement that there was no evidence whatever of any fraud in this court, although all its judges were elected as Democrats, while proof was abundant that the duty entrusted to it of making citizens of the United States was discharged throughout with marked propriety and dignity.

In the Supreme and Superior Courts only were frauds proven. To what extent we will now consider. The following table was sworn to as being the daily number of applications for naturalization on file in the Supreme Court Clerk’s office for 1868:

TABLE III

APPLICANTS FOR NATURALIZATION IN SUPREME COURT, NEW YORK CITY, IN
OCTOBER, 1868

======================
October 6 6
“ 7 8
“ 8 379
“ 9 668
“ 10 717
“ 12 723
“ 13 901
“ 14 523
“ 15 857
“ 16 721
“ 17 633
“ 19 955
“ 20 944
“ 21 773
“ 22 675
“ 23 587
----------------------
Total 10,070
======================

The significance of these great totals of applications for naturalization within a few days before election appears in Mr. Davenport’s summary of the behavior of the judges:[11]

But the essential aid rendered by these judges need not be further
detailed. It was mainly comprised of one or more of the following
derelictions of duty:

I. Hasty and incomplete examination of applicants and witnesses.

II. Total neglect at times to examine the one class or the other.

III. Through negligence, imposition, which might easily have been
guarded against, or direct complicity, the issue of certificates in
the names of persons who never appeared in Court, applied therefor,
produced a witness, or took an oath.

IV. Similar issue of certificates to applicants, persons of assumed
or fictitious names and others, upon the oath of residence and
moral character of persons of assumed and fictitious names, or of
known criminals and persons of immoral character.

V. Similar issue of certificates upon “minor applications” when
the persons to whom such certificates issued were known, or could
readily have been ascertained to be, unentitled thereto on such
applications.

VI. Total neglect or refusal to commit known disreputable
persons and others whose business it was for pecuniary or other
consideration to act as witnesses, and who in such capacity
repeatedly appeared before them.

VII. The conducting of naturalization proceedings in a secret
manner, by causing citizens and others to be denied admission to
the court-room, or ejected therefrom when observed.

The Judiciary Committee of the New York State Assembly, in a report upon the first notorious election frauds made to that House of the state legislature thirty years before, or on April 6, 1838, already had registered the fact that this was no post-war state of affairs, and depicted the situation of which the frauds of 1868 were only one year’s fruit:

Men vote who do not reside in the ward, often not in the state;
aliens are frequently brought to the polls and their vote imposed
upon the inspectors, although many of them have not been a week in
the country; and voters are not infrequently taken from poll to
poll, voting in three or four different wards at the same election.
These are the frauds constantly practiced at our elections, to the
disgrace of the state, and to the manifest wrong of the country.

It was partly the sense of the great public danger lying in such conditions, partly the growing anti-foreign feeling, and altogether an improving public morality, that beginning about 1870 and increasing as the years passed, brought about the cleansing of public elections and the reform embodied in the naturalization law of 1906 which has totally abolished the situation into which the immigrants of the mid-century and earlier stepped as into a swamp. Still survives in some quarters the notion that the alien is hurried from the ship to the ballot box, and that he pours therein some corrupting influence brought with him from abroad. The latter never was true; he has accepted and taken advantage of the situation which we ourselves created and suffered for generations to exist. The former was true during three-quarters of a century, but it is true no longer, and has not been true for nearly two decades.

FIRST CHOICE IN POLITICS

Bear it in mind that the chief motive of the newcomer is the same as that which usually leads men to go anywhere--the desire to “better himself.” It is notable that a very large number of immigrants arrive with the notion that the Republican party is the “party of prosperity,” of the “full dinner pail,” high wages, and the other advantages which have been the widely advertised slogans of that party. Without passing upon the question of the truth of these slogans, one may note that what actually happens is that the immigrant’s real search is for that connection, political or industrial, which involves employment and other advantages of a material kind. As soon as the conditions permit, he joins the penumbra of the political organization which has jobs to distribute, which controls public contracts and the wages that go with them. That means Tammany and the Democratic party in New York City; in Philadelphia it means the Republican organization, which in its day has followed and in some respects surpassed Tammany in all the ways of political corruption and machinism. In other cities it has been to this party or that, as the dominant color shifted, that the immigrant has swung.

As long as the naturalization process was the sport of corrupt politics, the political organizations gave early attention to the alien. With the institution of the present stringent law and practice, however, and also with the vast magnitude of the flood--swamping all the machinery which had been devised to absorb the immigrants--the politicians up to a recent time ceased to pay any attention to them. One of the results of this has been a considerable increase in the lapse of time between the arrival of the immigrant and his first steps in the direction of citizenship. One of the most enterprising of the younger leaders of Tammany Hall said to the present writer some months ago:

We don’t pay any attention to the alien until he comes to us for
some favor--a job, a peddling license, some help when his boy is
arrested, or assistance in getting out his naturalization papers.
There’s too many of ’em. When they do come, we do what we can for
them, and naturally we say: “Well, how about it? Are you going to
see the Democratic organization only when you want something? Why
aren’t you a citizen? Get yourself naturalized and then come along
with us.”

All of which is very natural and human, and a good illustration of the way in which the politician gets his hold upon the individual voter--newcomer or native.

The war created a new interest in the alien, brought new pressure upon him to become a citizen. Private concerns demanded at least “first papers” as a condition for employment; labor organizations intensified their insistence upon citizenship, or at least declaration of intention, as a prerequisite to membership; laws were passed in many states increasing the disabilities of aliens. And the political organizations generally have returned, but in a far better spirit, to the former search for voters among the foreign born; creating committees and bureaus to assist the alien in getting naturalization, and resuming the old “hand-picking” methods of getting the foreign born into active participation.