Forgotten Books: A take on the United States immigration from 1913
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| Henry Pratt Fairchild, "Immigration". |
Immigration is a hot topic today and was a hot topic in the past, but most of us don't know much about the old views on immigration. This is why this century old text caught my attention.
Henry Pratt Fairchild published this book in 1913 - a year before the start of WWI. The full title was Immigration: A world movement and its American significance. The text covers the immigration to North America since the colonial times.
The author was born in 1880. He became a sociologist and taught at New York University. Fairchild covered controversial topics such as race, abortion, contraception, and immigration - there is a list of his books at the end of the post. He got involved with Planned Parenthood since 1916 and was a member of the American Eugenics Society. Fairchild served as president of the American Sociological Society in 1936.
Some interesting points from the book.
- A Dutch ship introduced the first African slaves to North America in 1619 - today many believe that African slaves were brought before.
Slaves were introduced to the Caribe since the 16th century. Records speak of the English privateer ship White Lion as the first one to bring slaves to North America in 1619. The British captured them from a Portuguese ship in route to a Spanish colony. - William Penn opened Pennsylvania to immigrants promising freedom and religious tolerance. By 1682 Pennsylvania had a mix of immigrants that included English Quakers, Scottish and Irish Presbyterians, German Mennonites, and French Huguenots. According to the book, in just 20 years half of the population was German.
- The trend of European immigration continued in the years before the American Revolution. America had plenty of vacant land and scarcity of men to work it, so immigrants were received with open arms. The American colonies competed to attract people to their territories.
- Roman Catholics were discriminated.
- The book quotes the arrival of fifty thousand criminals from the British Islands,
- By the 1780s all arrivals were classified as immigrants and not colonists. But still, newcomers were welcomed. This is explained by this 1787 quote from Benjamin Franklin: "Strangers are welcome, because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old inhabitants are not jealous of them.... " The estimates of immigrants for this period didn't surpass the 250,000.
- Fears of foreign influence grew by the end of the 18th century. The Alien Bill of 1798 - also known as Alien and Sedition Acts - allowed the deportation of dangerous aliens and increased the required time for immigrants to become citizens.
- Germans and British immigrants assimilated easily.
- The first official statistics of immigration were collected in 1820.
- In 1842 the number of immigrants surpassed the one hundred thousand. There were issues with housing, unemployment, beggary, prostitution, and criminality. The opposition to the immigrants grew and politicians and the media began to speak against immigration to the United States. Their points were poor assimilation, city congestion, raising crime and homelessness.
- The 1841 article "The Irish in America" compares Irish and German immigration. It accuses immigrants of working for less money causing a decrease in wages. At this time the immigration to the United States was led by the Irish followed by British and Germans.
- Some voices supported the influx of immigrants to the United States. In 1855 a magazine article said that "...America pre-eminently owes its growth and prosperity to the amalgamation of foreign blood. To cut off, therefore, or to discourage its influx, will be to check the current from which our very life is drawn."
- The Civil War caused a fall in immigration. Many immigrants moved to the west of the country encouraged by the Homestead act of 1862. This law gave to any citizen or intended citizen the right to claim up to 160 acres of surveyed government land if had never borne arms against the United States.
- Immigration increased again and set new records after the Civil War - in the 1870s.
- Chinese miners arrived with the discovery of gold in California. They were welcomed initially, but later racism and envy raised opposition. Critics pointed their inability to assimilate, lack of desire to become permanent residents, and the fact that they sent money to their country of origin.
- The Chinaman became a scapegoat. Political parties and candidates embraced anti-Chinese declarations as recipes for success.
- In 1876 a special committee of the Congress published an anti-Chinese report.
- The treaty of 1868 - Burlingame-Seward Treaty - eased immigration restrictions for Chinese people but didn't give rights of naturalization to the newcomers. These rights were definitely excluded by law in 1870 - The Naturalization Act of 1870.
- Fairchild writes on the Chinese topic: "This history of Chinese immigration is not a matter in which the citizen of the United States can take much pride."
- In the 1880s begin new streams of immigration from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
- In 1906 the Bureau of Immigration changed its name to Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization.
- From 1820 to 1912 a total of 29,611,052 immigrants came to the United States. Henry Pratt Fairchild sets the cause of these inflows to the economic development of the country.
- He wrote stuff similar to the discourse of today about the immigration status of the beginning of the 20th century. Some quotes from the book follow.
Much is said and written in these days about the 'immigration problem,It seems likely that this country has already within its borders all the alien elements that will be needed for a long time to come.
There yet remains to be considered the matter of the quality of immigrants to-day as compared with those of past generations.
The importance of the knowledge of English to our foreign residents must not be underemphasized. The lack of it is an almost insuperable bar to assimilation. But the two should not be confused.
The native-born children of foreign parents seem to be very well assimilated.
The one great assimilative agency, which is continually cited as the hope of the coming generation of the foreign-born, is the American public school.
The barriers of race, set for the most part by Americans, can hardly be broken down. The immigrant is still an Italian, or a Slav, or a Greek, as long as he lives, and Americans regard him as in a measure a stranger, no matter how cultivated, or wealthy, or broad-minded he may be.
There can be little doubt that race prejudice is the greatest single barrier to assimilation. Ministers who try to attract the foreigners to their churches find that their old parishioners do not wish to associate with them.
...there is an even more bitter prejudice existing between various foreign groups, as has been mentioned already. This is also a most serious obstacle in the way of assimilation. One of the first to cry, 'Down with the foreigners,' is the Irishman.
Henry Pratt Fairchild also wrote in his book:
No population movement of equal social significance, and comparable in volume, has ever taken place within the recorded history of the human race. And never again, so far as the human eye can see, can it be repeated, when the heyday of immigration to the United States is over.
On this he was wrong. We just need to check today's immigration statistics.
List of some books from Henry Pratt Fairchild
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