New Members and an Old Game II
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.
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: