NEW VIEWPOINTS IN CHAPTER I THE INFLUENCE OF IMMIGRATION ON AMERICAN HISTORY The New World was discovered by a man who was trying his utmost to find an older world than the one from which he had sailed. If Columbus had known that he had failed to reach the fabled Orient, he would have died a bitterly disillusioned man. Yet, in the judgment of history, the measure of his greatness is to be found in the fact that he committed this cardinal blunder, for thereby he and the later explorers opened up to the crowded populations of Europe a means of escape from poverty and oppression for many centuries to come. The ratio between man and land became changed for the whole civilized world, and there opened up before humanity unsuspected opportunities for development and progress. On account of political disturbances in Europe and the difficulties of ocean travel, the full possibilities of this epochal change were only gradually developed; and the effects were thus distributed through the last four centuries of world-history. But the event itself stands forth as one of the tremendous facts of history. So far as the human mind can foresee, nothing of a similar nature can ever happen again. The great Völkerwanderungen, set in motion by the opening up of the Western Hemisphere, have been essentially unlike any earlier migrations in history, and in comparison with them most of the earlier movements of population were numerically insignificant. In a large sense, all American history has been the product of these migratory movements from the Old World. Since the red-skinned savage has never been a potent factor in American development, the whole history of the United States and, to a lesser degree, of the two Americas is, at bottom, the story of the successive waves of immigration and of the adaptation of the newcomers and their descendants to the new surroundings offered by the Western Hemisphere. Thus the two grand themes of American history are, properly, the influence of immigration upon American life and institutions, and the influence of the American environment, especially the frontier in the early days and the industrial integration of more recent times, upon the ever-changing composite population. I Columbus's first voyage of discovery was a strange foreshadowing of the later history of the American people, for, in a very real sense, his voyage may be considered an international enterprise. Acting under the authority of Spain, this Italian sailed with a crew consisting of Spaniards, one Irishman, an Englishman, and an Israelite. These nationalities were later to enter fully into the rich heritage which this voyage made possible to the world. In the next two centuries the nations of Europe, large and small, sought to stake out colonial claims in America, not with entire success from an imperialistic point of view, but with the result that cultural foundations were laid whose influence may still be traced in the legal systems, customs, and institutions of many parts of the United States today. A familiar illus tration is afforded in the case of Louisiana, where the continental civil law, instead of the English common law, governs domestic relations and transfers of property as a reminder of the days when the French and the Spanish owned the land. Contrary to a widespread belief, even the people of the thirteen English colonies were a mixture of ethnic breeds. Indeed, these colonies formed the most cosmopolitan area in the world at the time. This was due, in part, to the English conquest of colonies planted by rival European powers along the Atlantic Coast, but was the result more largely of abundant immigration from various parts of the world after the original settlements had been well established. A Colonial Dame or a Daughter of the American Revolution might conceivably have nothing but pure Hebrew blood or French or German blood in her veins. During the first century of English colonization, the seventeenth, the English race was the main contributor to the population, the Dutch and French Huguenot contributions being less important. These racial elements occupied the choice lands near the coast, and thus compelled the stream of immigration of the eighteenth century to pour into the interior, a significant development in view of the different character and great numbers of these later settlers. While the religious motive has properly been stressed in the history of colonization, it should not be overlooked that the economic urge, operating independently or as a stiffening to religious conviction, sent countless thousands fleeing to American shores. We need not wink at the fact that the immigrants of colonial times were actuated by the same motives as the immigrants today, namely a determination to escape religious or political oppression and a desire to improve their living conditions. To make this generalization strictly applicable to immigration in our own day, one might wish to reverse the order of emphasis, although the Russian Jews and the Armenian refugees are conspicuous examples of the contrary. The earliest English settlement, that at Jamestown, was sent out by an English trading corporation which was interested primarily in making profits for the stockholders of the company out of the industry of the settlers. In a like spirit, that canny Quaker William Penn lost no opportunity, after the first settlements were made in his dominion of Pennsylvania, to stimulate immigration artificially, for the resulting enhancement of real estate values meant an increased income for him. He advertised his lands widely throughout Europe, offering large tracts at nominal prices and portraying the political and religious advantages of residence under his rule. In anticipation of later practices, he maintained paid agents in the Rhine Valley, who were so successful that within a score of years German immigrants numbered almost one-half of the population. Another source of "assisted immigration" was to be found in the practice of European nations to drain their almshouses and jails into their colonies; it has been estimated that as many as fifty thousand criminals were sent to the thirteen colonies by Great Britain. Due allowance must, of course, be made for a legal code which condemned offenders to death for stealing a joint of meat worth more than one shilling! Perhaps one-half of all the white immigrants during the larger part of the colonial period were unable to pay their expenses. They came "indentured" and were auctioned off for a period of service by the ship captains in payment for their transportation. Still another element of the population, perhaps one-fifth of the whole in the eighteenth century, consisted of Guinea negroes who became emigrants to the New World only through the exercise of superior force. A well-known historian is |