Races and Immigrants in America.

by John R. Commons.

CHAPTER I

RACE AND DEMOCRACY

"All men are created equal." So wrote Thomas Jefferson, and so agreed with him the delegates from the American colonies. But we must not press them too closely nor insist on the literal interpretation of their words. They were not publishing a scientific treatise on human nature nor describing the physical, intellectual, and moral qualities of different races and different individuals, but they were bent upon a practical object in politics. They desired to sustain before the world the cause of independence by such appeals as they thought would have effect; and certainly the appeal to the sense of equal rights before G.o.d and the law is the most powerful that can be addressed to the ma.s.ses of any people. This is the very essence of American democracy, that one man should have just as large opportunity as any other to make the most of himself, to come forward and achieve high standing in any calling to which he is inclined. To do this the bars of privilege have one by one been thrown down, the suffrage has been extended to every man, and public office has been opened to any one who can persuade his fellow-voters or their representatives to select him.

But there is another side to the successful operations of democracy. It is not enough that equal opportunity to partic.i.p.ate in making and enforcing the laws should be vouchsafed to all--it is equally important that all should be capable of such partic.i.p.ation. The individuals, or the cla.s.ses, or the races, who through any mental or moral defect are unable to a.s.sert themselves beside other individuals, cla.s.ses, or races, and to enforce their right to an equal voice in determining the laws and conditions which govern all, are just as much deprived of the privilege as though they were excluded by the const.i.tution. In the case of individuals, when they sink below the level of joint partic.i.p.ation, we recognize them as belonging to a defective or criminal or pauper cla.s.s, and we provide for them, not on the basis of their rights, but on the basis of charity or punishment. Such cla.s.ses are exceptions in point of numbers, and we do not feel that their non-partic.i.p.ation is a flaw in the operations of democratic government. But when a social cla.s.s or an entire race is unable to command that share in conducting government to which the laws ent.i.tle it, we recognize at once that democracy as a practical inst.i.tution has in so far broken down, and that, under the forms of democracy, there has developed a cla.s.s oligarchy or a race oligarchy.

Two things, therefore, are necessary for a democratic government such as that which the American people have set before themselves: equal opportunities before the law, and equal ability of cla.s.ses and races to use those opportunities. If the first is lacking, we have legal oligarchy; if the second is lacking, we have actual oligarchy disguised as democracy.

Now it must be observed that, compared with the first two centuries of our nation's history, the present generation is somewhat shifting its ground regarding democracy. While it can never rightly be charged that our fathers overlooked the inequalities of races and individuals, yet more than the present generation did they regard with hopefulness the educational value of democracy. "True enough," they said, "the black man is not equal to the white man, but once free him from his legal bonds, open up the schools, the professions, the businesses, and the offices to those of his number who are most aspiring, and you will find that, as a race, he will advance favorably in comparison with his white fellow-citizens."

It is now nearly forty years since these opportunities and educational advantages were given to the negro, not only on equal terms, but actually on terms of preference over the whites, and the fearful collapse of the experiment is recognized even by its partisans as something that was inevitable in the nature of the race at that stage of its development. We shall have reason in the following pages to enter more fully into this discussion, because the race question in America has found its most intense expression in the relations between the white and the negro races, and has there shown itself to be the most fundamental of all American social and political problems. For it was this race question that precipitated the Civil War, with the ominous problems that have followed upon that catastrophe; and it is this same race problem that now diverts attention from the treatment of those pressing economic problems of taxation, corporations, trusts, and labor organizations which themselves originated in the Civil War. The race problem in the South is only one extreme of the same problem in the great cities of the North, where popular government, as our forefathers conceived it, has been displaced by one-man power, and where a profound distrust of democracy is taking hold upon the educated and property-holding cla.s.ses who fashion public opinion.

This changing att.i.tude toward the educational value of self-government has induced a more serious study of the nature of democratic inst.i.tutions and of the cla.s.ses and races which are called upon to share in them. As a people whose earlier hopes have been shocked by the hard blows of experience, we are beginning to pause and take invoice of the heterogeneous stocks of humanity that we have admitted to the management of our great political enterprise. We are trying to look beneath the surface and to inquire whether there are not factors of heredity and race more fundamental than those of education and environment. We find that our democratic theories and forms of government were fashioned by but one of the many races and peoples which have come within their practical operation, and that that race, the so-called Anglo-Saxon, developed them out of its own insular experience unhampered by inroads of alien stock. When once thus established in England and further developed in America we find that other races and peoples, accustomed to despotism and even savagery, and wholly unused to self-government, have been thrust into the delicate fabric. Like a practical people as we pride ourselves, we have begun actually to despotize our inst.i.tutions in order to control these dissident elements, though still optimistically holding that we retain the original democracy. The earlier problem was mainly a political one--how to unite into one self-governing nation a scattered population with the wide diversity of natural resources, climates, and interests that mark a country soon to stretch from ocean to ocean and from the arctics to the subtropics. The problem now is a social one,--how to unite into one people a congeries of races even more diverse than the resources and climates from which they draw their subsistence. That motto, "_E pluribus unum_," which in the past has guided those who through const.i.tutional debate and civil war worked out our form of government, must now again be the motto of those who would work out the more fundamental problem of divergent races. Here is something deeper than the form of government--it is the essence of government--for it is that union of the hearts and lives and abilities of the people which makes government what it really is.

The conditions necessary for democratic government are not merely the const.i.tutions and laws which guarantee equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for these after all are but paper doc.u.ments. They are not merely freedom from foreign power, for the Australian colonies enjoy the most democratic of all governments, largely because they are owned by another country which has protected them from foreign and civil wars. Neither are wealth and prosperity necessary for democracy, for these may tend to luxury, inequality, and envy. World power, however glorious and enticing, is not helpful to democracy, for it inclines to militarism and centralization, as did Rome in the hands of an emperor, or Venice in the hands of an oligarchy. The true foundations of democracy are in the character of the people themselves, that is, of the individuals who const.i.tute the democracy. These are: first, intelligence--the power to weigh evidence and draw sound conclusions, based on adequate information; second, manliness, that which the Romans called virility, and which at bottom is dignified self-respect, self-control, and that self-a.s.sertion and jealousy of encroachment which marks those who, knowing their rights, dare maintain them; third, and equally important, the capacity for cooperation, that willingness and ability to organize, to trust their leaders, to work together for a common interest and toward a common destiny, a capacity which we variously designate as patriotism, public spirit, or self-government.

These are the basic qualities which underlie democracy,--intelligence, manliness, cooperation. If they are lacking, democracy is futile. Here is the problem of races, the fundamental division of mankind. Race differences are established in the very blood and physical const.i.tution.

They are most difficult to eradicate, and they yield only to the slow processes of the centuries. Races may change their religions, their forms of government, their modes of industry, and their languages, but underneath all these changes they may continue the physical, mental, and moral capacities and incapacities which determine the real character of their religion, government, industry, and literature. Race and heredity furnish the raw material, education and environment furnish the tools, with which and by which social inst.i.tutions are fashioned; and in a democracy race and heredity are the more decisive, because the very education and environment which fashion the oncoming generations are themselves controlled through universal suffrage by the races whom it is hoped to educate and elevate.

=Social Cla.s.ses.=--Closely connected with race division in its effect upon democracy are the divisions between social cla.s.ses. In America we are wont to congratulate ourselves on the absence of cla.s.ses with their accompanying hatred and envy. Whether we shall continue thus to commend ourselves depends partly on what we mean by social cla.s.ses. If we compare our situation with an extreme case, that of India,[1] where social cla.s.ses have been hardened into rigid castes, we can see the connection between races and cla.s.ses. For it is generally held that the castes of India originated in the conquests by an Aryan race of an indigenous dark or colored race. And while the clear-cut race distinctions have been blended through many centuries of amalgamation, yet it is most apparent that a gradation in the color of the skin follows the gradation in social position, from the light-colored, high-caste Brahman to the dark-colored, low-caste Sudra, or outcast pariah. Race divisions have been forgotten, but in their place religion has sanctified a division even more rigid than that of race, for it is sacrilege and defiance of the G.o.ds when a man of low caste ventures into the occupation and calling of the high caste. India's condition now is what might be conceived for our Southern states a thousand years from now, when the black man who had not advanced to the lighter shades of mulatto should be excluded from all professions and skilled trades and from all public offices, and should be restricted to the coa.r.s.est kind of service as a day laborer or as a field hand on the agricultural plantations. Confined to this limited occupation, with no incentive to economize because of no prospect to rise above his station, and with his numbers increasing, compet.i.tion would reduce his wages to the lowest limit consistent with the continuance of his kind. Such a development is plainly going on at the present day, and we may feel reasonably certain that we can see in our own South the very historical steps by which in the forgotten centuries India proceeded to her rigid system of castes.

There is lacking but one essential to the Indian system; namely, a religion which ascribes to G.o.d himself the inequalities contrived by man. For the Indian derives the sacred Brahman from the mouth of G.o.d, to be His spokesman on earth, while the poor Sudra comes from the feet of G.o.d, to be forever the servant of all the castes above him. But the Christian religion has set forth a different theory, which ascribes to G.o.d entire impartiality toward races and individuals. He has "made of one blood all nations." It is out of this doctrine that the so-called "self-evident" a.s.sertion in the Declaration of Independence originated, and it is this doctrine which throughout the history of European civilization has contributed to smoothen out the harsh lines of caste into the less definite lines of social cla.s.ses. For it must be remembered that Europe, like India, is built upon conquest, and the earlier populations were reduced to the condition of slaves and serfs to the conquering races. True, there was not the extreme opposition of white and colored races which distinguished the conquests of India, and this is also one of the reasons why slavery and serfdom gradually gave way and races coalesced. Nevertheless, the peasantry of Europe to-day is in large part the product of serfdom and of that race-subjection which produced serfdom. Herein we may find the source of that arrogance on the one hand and subserviency on the other, which so closely relate cla.s.s divisions to race divisions. The European peasant, says Professor Shaler,[2] "knows himself to be by birthright a member of an inferior cla.s.s, from which there is practically no chance of escaping.... It is characteristic of peasants that they have accepted this inferior lot.

For generations they have regarded themselves as separated from their fellow-citizens of higher estate. They have no large sense of citizenly motives; they feel no sense of responsibility for any part of the public life save that which lies within their own narrow round of action."

How different from the qualities of the typical American citizen whose forefathers have erected our edifice of representative democracy! It was not the peasant cla.s.s of Europe that sought these sh.o.r.es in order to found a free government. It was the middle cla.s.s, the merchants and yeomen, those who in religion and politics were literally "protestants,"

and who possessed the intelligence, manliness, and public spirit which urged them to a.s.sert for themselves those inalienable rights which the church or the state of their time had arrogated to itself. With such a social cla.s.s democracy is the only acceptable form of government. They demand and secure equal opportunities because they are able to rise to those opportunities. By their own inherent nature they look forward to and aspire to the highest positions.

But the peasants of Europe, especially of Southern and Eastern Europe, have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy. Their only avenues of escape from their subordinate positions have been through the army and the church, and these two inst.i.tutions have drawn from the peasants their ablest and brightest intellects into a life which deprived them of offspring. "Among the prosperous folk there have been ever many cla.s.ses of occupations tempting the abler youths, while among the laborers the church has afforded the easiest way to rise, and that which is most tempting to the intelligent. The result has been, that while the priesthood and monastic orders have systematically debilitated all the populations of Catholic Europe, their influence has been most efficient in destroying talent in the peasant cla.s.s."[3]

Thus it is that the peasants of Catholic Europe, who const.i.tute the bulk of our immigration of the past thirty years, have become almost a distinct race, drained of those superior qualities which are the foundation of democratic inst.i.tutions. If in America our boasted freedom from the evils of social cla.s.ses fails to be vindicated in the future, the reasons will be found in the immigration of races and cla.s.ses incompetent to share in our democratic opportunities. Already in the case of the negro this division has hardened and seems destined to become more rigid. Therein we must admit at least one exception to our claim of immunity from social cla.s.ses. Whether with our public schools, our stirring politics, our ubiquitous newspapers, our common language, and our network of transportation, the children of the European immigrant shall be able to rise to the opportunities unreached by his parents is the largest and deepest problem now pressing upon us. It behooves us as a people to enter into the practical study of this problem, for upon its outcome depends the fate of government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

=Races in the United States.=--We use the term "race" in a rather loose and elastic sense; and indeed we are not culpable in so doing, for the ethnographers are not agreed upon it. Races have been cla.s.sified on the basis of color, on the basis of language, on the basis of supposed origin, and in these latter days on the basis of the shape of the skull.

For our purpose we need consider only those large and apparent divisions which have a direct bearing on the problem of a.s.similation, referring those who seek the more subtle problems to other books.[4]

Mankind in general has been divided into three and again into five great racial stocks, and one of these stocks, the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, is represented among us by ten or more subdivisions which we also term races. It need not cause confusion if we use the term "race" not only to designate these grand divisions which are so far removed by nature one from another as to render successful amalgamation an open question, but also to designate those peoples or nationalities which we recognize as distinct yet related within one of the large divisions. Within the area controlled by the United States are now to be found representatives of each of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and it would be a fascinating study to turn from the more practical topics before us and follow the races of man in their dispersion over the globe and their final gathering together again under the republic of America. First is the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic race, which, wherever it originated, sent its Sanskrit conquerors to the South to plant themselves upon a black race related to the Africans and the Australians. Its Western branch, many thousand miles away, made the conquest and settlement of Europe.

Here it sent out many smaller branches, among them the Greeks and Latins, whose situation on the Mediterranean helped in great measure to develop brilliant and conquering civilizations, and who, after twenty centuries of decay and subjection, have within the past twenty years begun again their westward movement, this time to North and South America. North of Greece the Aryans became the manifold Slavs, that most prolific of races. One branch of the Slavs has spread the power of Russia east and west, and is now crushing the alien Hebrew, Finn, Lithuanian, and German, and even its fellow-Slav, the Pole, who, to escape their oppressors, are moving to America. The Russian himself, with his vast expanse of fertile prairie and steppe, does not migrate across the water, but drives away those whom he can not or will not a.s.similate. From Austria-Hungary, with its medley of races, come other branches of the Slavs, the Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, Roumanians, Poles, and Ruthenians, some of them mistakenly called Huns, but really oppressed by the true Hun, the Magyar, and by the German. To the west of the Slavs we find the Teutonic branches of the Aryans, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and, above all, the English and Scotch-Irish with their descent from the Angles, Saxons, and Franks, who have given to America our largest accessions in numbers, besides our language, our inst.i.tutions, and forms of government. Then other branches of the Aryans known as Celtic, including the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh, formerly driven into the hills and islands by the Teutons, have in these latter days vied with the English and Germans in adding to our population. The French, a mixture of Teuton and Celt, a nationality noted above all others for its stationary population and dislike of migration, are nevertheless contributing to our numbers by the circuitous route of Canada, and are sending to us a cla.s.s of people more different from the present-day Frenchman in his native home than the Italian or Portuguese is different from the Frenchman.

In the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and the Tigris the Semitic race had separated from its cousins, the Aryans, and one remarkable branch of this race, the Hebrews, settling on a diminutive tract of land on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean and finally driven forth as wanderers to live upon their wits, exploited by and exploiting in turn every race of Europe, have ultimately been driven forth to America by the thousands from Russia and Austria where nearly one-half of their present number is found.

Another race, the Mongolian, multiplying on the plains of Asia, sent a conquering branch to the west, scattering the Slavs and Teutons and making for itself a permanent wedge in the middle of Europe, whence, under the name of Magyar, the true Hungarian, the Mongolians come to America. Going in another direction from this Asiatic home the Mongolian race has made the circuit of the globe, and the Chinese, j.a.panese, and Koreans meet in America their unrecognized cousins of many thousand years ago.

Last of the immigrants to be mentioned, but among the earliest in point of time, is the black race from the slave coast of Africa. This was not a free and voluntary migration of a people seeking new fields to escape oppression, but a forced migration designed to relieve the white race of toil. All of the other races mentioned, the Aryan, the Semitic, the Mongolian, had in early times met one another and even perhaps had sprung from the same stock, so that when in America they come together there is presumably a renewal of former ties. But as far back as we can trace the history of races in the records of archaeology or philology, we find no traces of affiliation with the black race. The separation by continents, by climate, by color, and by inst.i.tutions is the most diametrical that mankind exhibits anywhere. It is even greater than that between the Aryan and the native American, improperly called the Indian, whose presence on the soil which we have seized from him has furnished us with a peculiar variation in our multiform race problem. For the Indian tribes, although within our acquired territory, have been treated as foreign nations, and their reservations have been saved to them under the forms of treaties. Only recently has there sprung up a policy of admitting them to citizenship, and therefore the Indian, superior in some respects to the negro, has not interfered with our experiment in democracy.

Last in point of time we have taken into our fold the Malay race, with some seven million representatives in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands. Like the Indian and the negro, this race never in historic times prior to the discovery of the new world came into close contact with the white races. With its addition we have completed the round of all the grand divisions of the human family, and have brought together for a common experiment in self-government the white, yellow, black, red, and brown races of the earth.

=Amalgamation and a.s.similation.=--Scarcely another nation in ancient or modern history can show within compact borders so varied an aggregation.

It is frequently maintained that a nation composed of a mixed stock is superior in mind and body to one of single and h.o.m.ogeneous stock. But it must be remembered that amalgamation requires centuries. The English race is probably as good an example of a mixed race as can be found in modern history, yet this race, though a mixture of the closely related primitive Celt, the conquering Teuton, and the Latinized Scandinavian, did not reach a common language and h.o.m.ogeneity until three hundred years after the last admixture. We know from modern researches that all of the races of Europe are mixed in their origin, but we also know that so much of that mixture as resulted in amalgamation occurred at a time so remote that it has been ascribed to the Stone Age.[5] The later inroads have either been but temporary and have left but slight impression, or they have resulted in a division of territory. Thus the conquest of Britain by the Teutons and the Normans has not produced amalgamation so much as it has caused a segregation of the Celts in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and of the Teutons, with their later but slight infusion of Normans, in England. On the continent of Europe this segregation has been even more strongly marked. The present stratification of races and nationalities has followed the upheavals and inroads of a thousand years introduced by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Two developments have taken place. A conquering race has reduced a native population in part to subjection and has imposed upon the natives its laws, customs, and language. In course of time the subject race becomes a lower social cla.s.s and slowly a.s.similates with the upper cla.s.ses, producing a h.o.m.ogeneous nationality with a new evolution of laws, customs, and language. This is the history of four great nations of Europe,--the French, the German, the English, the Italian. The other development has been the segregation of a portion of the conquered race, who having fled their conquerors avoid actual subjection by escaping to the mountains and islands. Here they preserve their original purity of stock and language. This is the history of Austria-Hungary, whose earlier population of Slavs has been scattered right and left by German and Hun and who now const.i.tute separate branches and dialects of the una.s.similated races. That Austria-Hungary with its dozen languages should be able to hold together as a "dual empire" for many years is one of the marvels of history, and is frequently ascribed to that which is the essence of autocracy, the personal hold of the emperor.

The little bundle of republics known as Switzerland is a federation of French, Germans, and Italians, who retain their languages and have developed what out of such a conflict of races has elsewhere never been developed, a high grade of democratic government. Here in historic times there has been no amalgamation of races or a.s.similation of languages, but there has been the distinct advantage of a secluded freedom from surrounding feudal lords, which naturally led to a loose federation of independent cantons. It is Switzerland's mountains and not her mixed races that have promoted her democracy. At the other end of the world the highest development of democracy is in the colonies of Australasia, where a h.o.m.ogeneous race, protected from foreign foes, and prohibiting the immigration of alien races and inferior cla.s.ses, has worked out self-government in politics and industry. In the Roman Empire we see the opposite extreme. At first a limited republic, the extension of conquests, and the incorporation of alien races led to that centralization of power in the hands of one man which transformed the republic into the empire. The British Empire, which to-day covers all races of the earth, is growingly democratic as regards Englishmen, but despotic as regards subject races. Taking the empire as a whole, neither amalgamation nor self-government is within the possibilities of its const.i.tutional growth.

In America, on the other hand, we have attempted to unite all races in one commonwealth and one elective government. We have, indeed, a most notable advantage compared with other countries where race divisions have undermined democracy. A single language became dominant from the time of the earliest permanent settlement, and all subsequent races and languages must adopt the established medium. This is essential, for it is not physical amalgamation that unites mankind; it is mental community. To be great a nation need not be of one blood, it must be of one mind. Racial inequality and inferiority are fundamental only to the extent that they prevent mental and moral a.s.similation. If we think together, we can act together, and the organ of common thought and action is common language. Through the prism of this n.o.ble instrument of the human mind all other instruments focus their powers of a.s.similation upon the new generations as they come forth from the disunited immigrants. The public schools, the newspapers, the books, the political parties, the trade unions, the religious propagandists with their manifold agencies of universal education, the railroads with their inducements to our unparalleled mobility of population, are all dependent upon our common language for their high efficiency. Herein are we fortunate in our plans for the Americanization of all races within our borders. We are not content to let the fate of our inst.i.tutions wait upon the slow and doubtful processes of blood amalgamation, but are eager to direct our energies toward the more rapid movements of mental a.s.similation. Race and heredity may be beyond our organized control; but the instrument of a common language is at hand for conscious improvement through education and social environment.

CHAPTER II

COLONIAL RACE ELEMENTS

Doubtless the most fascinating topic in the study of races is that of the great men whom each race has produced. The personal interest surrounding those who have gained eminence carries us back over each step of their careers to their childhood, their parents, and their ancestry.[6] Pride of race adds its zest, and each race has its eulogists who claim every great man whose family tree reveals even a single ancestor, male or female, near or remote, of the eulogized race.

Here is a "conflict of jurisdiction," and the student who is without race prejudice begins to look for causes other than race origin to which should be ascribed the emergence of greatness.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge[7] attempted, some years ago, to a.s.sign to the different races in America the 14,243 men eminent enough to find a place in "Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography." He prepared a statistical summary as follows:--

EMINENT AMERICANS

English 10,376 Scotch-Irish 1,439 German 659 Huguenot 589 Scotch 436 Dutch 336 Welsh 159 Irish 109 French 85 Scandinavian 31 Spanish 7 Italian 7 Swiss 5 Greek 3 Russian 1 Polish 1 ------ Total 14,243

When we inquire into the methods necessarily adopted in preparing a statistical table of this kind we discover serious limitations. Mr.

Lodge was confined to the paternal line alone, but if, as some biologists a.s.sert, the female is the conservative element which holds to the type, and the male is the variable element which departs from the type, then the specific contribution of the race factor would be found in the maternal line. However, let this dubious point pa.s.s. We find that in American life two hundred years of intermingling has in many if not in most cases of greatness broken into the continuity of race. True, the New England and Virginia stock has remained during most of this time of purely English origin, but the very fact that in Mr. Lodge's tables Ma.s.sachusetts has produced 2686 notables, while Virginia, of the same blood, has produced only 1038, must lead to the suspicion that factors other than race extraction are the mainspring of greatness.

It must be remembered that ability is not identical with eminence.

Ability is the product of ancestry and training. Eminence is an accident of social conditions. The English race was the main contributor to population during the seventeenth century, and English conquest determined the form of government, the language, and the opportunities for individual advancement. During the succeeding century the Scotch-Irish and the Germans migrated in nearly equal numbers, and their combined migration was perhaps as great as that of the English in the seventeenth century. But they were compelled to move to the interior, to become frontiersmen, to earn their living directly from the soil, and to leave to their English-sprung predecessors the more prominent occupations of politics, literature, law, commerce, and the army. The Germans, who, according to Lodge, "produced fewer men of ability than any other race in the United States," were further handicapped by their language and isolation, which continue to this day in the counties of Pennsylvania where they originally settled. On the other hand, the Huguenots and the Dutch came in the first century of colonization. They rapidly merged with the English, lost their language, and hence contributed their full share of eminence. Finally, the Irish, Scandinavian and other races, inconspicuous in the galaxy of notables, did not migrate in numbers until the middle of the nineteenth century, and, in addition to the restraints of language and poverty, they found the roads to prominence preoccupied.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "RETURN OF THE MAYFLOWER" Painting by Boughton, 1834]

Besides the accident of precedence in time, a second factor distinct from race itself has contributed to the eminence of one race over another. The Huguenots and the French, according to Lodge's statistics, show a percentage of ability in proportion to their total immigration much higher than that of any other race. But the Huguenots were a select cla.s.s of people, manufacturers and merchants, perhaps the most intelligent and enterprising of Frenchmen in the seventeenth century.

Furthermore the direct migration from France to this country has never included many peasants and wage-earners, but has been limited to the adventurous and educated. Had the French-Canadians who represent the peasantry of France been included in these comparisons, the proportion of French eminence would have been materially reduced.

The same is true of the English. Although sprung from one race, those who came to America represented at least two grades of society as widely apart as two races. The Pilgrims and Puritans of New England were the yeomen, the merchants, the manufacturers, skilled in industry, often independent in resources, and well trained in the intellectual controversies of religion and politics. The Southern planters also sprang from a cla.s.s of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted to intellectual pursuits. Beneath both these cla.s.ses were the indentured servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their pa.s.sage by service. But the majority of them were brought to this country through the advertis.e.m.e.nts of shipowners and landholders or even forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and pauperism. Though all of these cla.s.ses were of the same race, they were about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability and preparatory training.

The third and most important cause of eminence, apart from ancestry, is the industrial and legal environment. An agricultural community produces very few eminent men compared with the number produced where manufactures and commerce vie with agriculture to attract the youth. A state of widely diversified industrial interests is likely to create widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. Complicated problems of industry and politics stimulate the mind and reflect their influence in literature, art, education, science, and the learned professions. Most of all, equal opportunity for all cla.s.ses and large prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to stimulate individuals of native ability to their highest endeavor. It was the deadening effects of slavery, creating inequalities among the whites themselves, that smothered the genius of the Southerner whether Englishman, Huguenot, or Scotch-Irish, and it was the free inst.i.tutions of the North that invited their genius to unfold and blossom.

These considerations lead us to look with distrust on the claims of those who find in race ancestry or in race intermixture the reasons for such eminence as Americans have attained. While the race factor is decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive races, yet, in considering those Europeans races which have joined in our civilization, the important questions are: From what social cla.s.ses is immigration drawn? and, Do our social inst.i.tutions offer free opportunity and high incentive to the youth of ability? In so far as we get a choice selection of immigrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope for their native gifts, so far do they render to our country the services of genius, talent, and industry.

=Incentives to Immigration.=--It is the distinctive fact regarding colonial migration that it was Teutonic in blood and Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, and even the Scotch-Irish, who const.i.tuted practically the entire migration, were less than two thousand years ago one Germanic race in the forests surrounding the North Sea. The Protestant Reformation, sixteen centuries later, began among those peoples and found in them its st.u.r.diest supporters. The doctrines of the Reformation, adapted as they were to the strong individualism of the Germanic races, prepared the hearts of men for the doctrines of political liberty and const.i.tutional government of the succeeding century. The Reformation banished the idea that men must seek salvation through the intercession of priests and popes, who, however sacred, are only fellow-men, and set up the idea that each soul has direct access to G.o.d. With the Bible as a guide and his own conscience as a judge, each man was accountable only to one divine sovereign.

From the standpoint of the age this doctrine was too radical. It tended to break up existing society into sects and factions, and to precipitate those civil and religious wars which ended in a Catholic or aristocratic reaction. When this reaction came, the numerous Protestant sects of the extremer types found themselves the objects of persecution, and nothing remained but to seek a new land where the heavy hand of repression could not reach them. Thus America became the home of numberless religious sects and denominations of these several races. From England came Congregationalists (the "Pilgrims"), Puritans, Quakers, Baptists; from Scotland and Ireland came Presbyterians; from Germany came Quakers, Dunkards, Pietists, Ridge Hermits, Salzburgers, and Moravians.