Most of the early American settlers came from Missouri or Iowa, and represented therefore either the Southern or New England pioneer stock. In general it may be said that Oregon at that time was settled from the Mississippi Valley, and mainly by men who came as genuine settlers with their families, in striking contrast to the adventurers who invaded California.
Meanwhile, the British colonizers were coming from Canada, many of them French-Canadians, while the rest were mostly of Scotch ancestry. But the American population grew so much more rapidly that by 1846, when the Treaty was made defining the parallel of 49° as the boundary between the two nations, there were nearly 8000 American settlers in the Oregon territory as against about 1500 of British allegiance.
In 1860, of the 30,500 native immigrants in the State 40 per cent were of Southern birth. Nearly half of these were from Missouri, and a large part of the others from Kentucky or Tennessee. The remainder represented principally the New England stock which has always been considered to be the foundation of Oregon.
The actual permanent settlement of the Puget Sound country began in 1845, but progress for some years was slow. Scarcely had a start been made here when the gold rush turned everyone's attention to California. Following this came the Indian war of 1855 to 1856, and shortly afterward the Civil War upset all plans, leaving the few scattered inhabitants of the Puget Sound region in the midst of a wilderness, surrounded by hostile savages, and inevitably neglected by the government to which they naturally looked for attention.
Washington was separated from Oregon and established as an independent territory in 1853. The census found there only 3965 white persons, a small number to assume the responsibilities of a separate political existence. Walla Walla Valley was opened up in 1859, when the removal of a military interdict and a survey of public lands allowed a waiting population of some 2000 to rush in and spread over the whole of eastern Washington within a short time.
XI
THE SPOILS OF THE MEXICAN WAR
Ithas been remarked often that it was a mere accident that gave North America to the Nordics instead of to the King of Spain, when Columbus turned from his course to follow a flock of birds and thus sighted the West Indies instead of the mainland, but several other incidents played an equally important part in giving this empire to the British. The defeat of the Invincible Armada by the captains of Elizabeth stopped the expansion of Spain and thus gave the British an opportunity to begin their colonization, and the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson's administration virtually made certain that by far the larger part of the North American continent should belong to British stock, rather than to French or Spanish. Jefferson himself, who believed that the Purchase was illegal, saw its tremendous possibilities, but no one in his day could realize just what this action would mean in extending a Nordic civilization to the Pacific Ocean.
The settlement of the Louisiana Purchase by Americans made certain the conquest of Texas, which was extraordinarily aided by the fact that in the period after the War of 1812 there were not many more than 5000 Mexicans in that vast territory. The great Plains stretched southward as a wide-open domain, inviting settlement by those whowere far-sighted and aggressive enough to possess themselves of it.
The beginning of the American settlement of Texas is always dated from 1820, when the Connecticut Yankee, Moses Austin, started his colonization scheme. Austin himself had lived for some years in Missouri, but most of his settlers, like most of the other early pioneers of Texas, came from the lower Mississippi Valley or from Tennessee and Kentucky, with a sprinkling of adventurers from the Central and New England States and even from Europe.
By 1835, when the Americans so outnumbered the Mexicans that the throwing off of the Mexican yoke was inevitable, there were 30,000 or 35,000 Nordics settled in the territory. The original background of these can easily be remembered from what has been said before in these pages about the settlement of their respective States. They were overwhelmingly English and Scotch and pre-dominantly from the trans-Appalachian part of the United States.
The idea that most of these settlers went to Texas as a deliberate plan to acquire this region for the extension of the slave-holding States seems to have little basis. Most of them went, just as most of them or their fathers had gone to Tennessee or to Louisiana a few decades previously, in search of better and cheaper land, freer opportunities, and a possible fortune. It was the accident of geographical location that gave to Texas its importance as slave-holding territory, and that led indirectly to the war with Mexico.
On technical grounds there was little justification for a declaration of war in 1846, but from a larger point of view it was one of the most important and most beneficial acts ever taken by the American Government, in spite of the feeling of the Abolitionists, because it formed the final procedure in the spread of American sovereignty to the Pacific Ocean.
The United States was indeed deprived a few years later, at the time of the Gadsden Purchase, of the outlet to the Gulf of California which it should have had. Whether this was due to the climate of that region which made the surveyors shirk their duty, as one story goes, or to the drunkenness of the mapmakers which led them to draw the boundary line crooked, as another story has it, the result is unfortunate and might yet perhaps be rectified by a further purchase. The Southwest should have an outlet on the Gulf in the logic of the case.
This does not involve any desire to take over Lower California which is a peninsula of negligible value for Nordic purposes, and contains a Mexican population which under no circumstances should be incorporated in the United States. From a racial point of view it is indeed fortunate that the desire of James K. Polk's Administration to include the whole peninsula of Lower California in the transfer of sovereignty was not accomplished. Still more disastrous would have been a realization of the wishes of an important element in Congress which desired to annex a large part of northern Mexico.
Similarly, one can scarcely avoid being gratefulnowadays that Cuba did not get its independence in the first quarter of the nineteenth century instead of at the end. Henry Clay and others, encouraging the Cuban patriots, had virtually arranged to have the island taken over by the United States. In this instance abolitionist sentiment in the North, which prevented an extension of slave territory, was more beneficial to the true interests of America than it was a generation later—for the acquisition of Cuba would have brought into the union an indigestible mass of Mediterraneans and blacks.
When the suspicions and jealousies of international relations abate somewhat, it may be possible to make a slight rectification of the Arizona boundary which will give the Southwest its intended outlet on the Gulf of California. Such a step would doubtless promote the prosperity of the adjoining Mexican territory in every way. If Mexico could be persuaded to accept a gift of some of the United States' possessions in the West Indies, in return for this favor, the whole transaction would be most satisfactory.
It is now easy to see that Mexico could not have retained Texas under any circumstances, but the catastrophe (from the Mexican point of view) was made quick and certain by the encouragement of American immigration, in spite of refusals to discuss a sale of the whole territory to the United States, and by an attempt to fasten an objectionable State religion on the immigrants they had invited.
In the days of the Lone Star Republic, immigration increased rapidly. The Mexican War not only gave unlimited advertising to the region but furnished many Northerners with an opportunity to see something of it first-hand, and by the close of that conflict there were some 200,000 Americans in Texas. During the decade from 1850 to 1860 the growth of the State was exceeded by few in the Union.
Unfortunately much of this population was made up of Negroes who have ever since formed one of the real handicaps of this immense American Empire. As we have seen, the great bulk of the population of eastern and southern Texas came from the adjoining slave States, and it was not until the time of the Civil War that the northern counties had begun to attract settlers from Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. The war put a stop to this movement, but it was resumed later.
Meanwhile southern and western Texas had been attracting a German emigration made up largely of Alpines from the States along the Upper Rhine. This reached serious proportions as early as 1842, when a group of noblemen with uncertain motives fostered an Emigration Society Land Company. The movement continued in force up to the Civil War and indeed had not ceased altogether until the outbreak of the World War. Though Texas had but 20,000 German-born in 1860, these were so concentrated that half of the entire population of the southern part of the State, in the region surrounding San Antonio, was German. Here, as elsewhere, the Germans greatly diminished their value to their adopted country by an unwise insistence on retaining the customs and the language of the Fatherland.
The history of any country demonstrates that national unity is a necessary condition of national survival. Those who have come to the United States of their own will, to profit by what opportunities they find may well be expected to yield a whole-hearted allegiance to the country which thus benefits them, or to move elsewhere.
New Mexico, when it became a part of the territory of the United States, had a population made up of native and Mexican Indians, some of the latter having enough Spanish blood to cause them to consider themselves white men. The self-styled Spanish-American population of the present day is, properly speaking, composed of those whose ancestors were in the territory at the time of the Mexican War. The Spanish part of the description must be considered largely a courtesy title, for the amount of real Spanish blood in this hybrid population was always from a biological point of view nearly negligible, and the American part must be understood to mean native American Indians. The persistence of the Spanish language and culture is of course only a passing phase.
The Federal Census of 1850 credited New Mexico with 61,000 population not counting Indians, but the territory at that time included all of Arizona and Southeastern Colorado. By 1860 the population ofthe same territory was given at 82,979, plus 55,100 Indians. At this time there were less than 1200 natives of the United States in the whole territory.
Arizona had a fluctuating white population dependent upon the prosperity of the mining industry, but when the Federal troops were withdrawn at the outbreak of the Civil War most of the white men had to leave also. At that time the only real settlement was Tucson, where a few hundred Mexicans lived under mediæval conditions.
California had a population of Indians when the Spaniards coming from Mexico entered it. Most of them were of a very low order of intelligence and social development. The Spanish invaders were largely soldiers, and few of the members of these early expeditions brought their families. Hence, there was undoubtedly some mixing with the Indians from the very first days. In accordance with the custom elsewhere, those who had any white blood called themselves white, and the figures given by early writers for the number of Spanish in the colony must be understood in that light. The amount of real Spanish blood was extremely small and much of it was in the veins of missionaries who left no offspring.
The permanent population was made up of ex-soldiers who had settled down, married Indian women, and taken up land, together with occasional traders, vagabond sailors, and adventurers. Thepopulation of 1820 other than Indian could hardly have represented more than 500 men. The Mexican administration made an effort to supply women of Spanish ancestry to the colony in order to prevent too much matrimonial mixture with the Indians, which, even at that time, was regarded as somewhat disgraceful; but the number of brides who could be sent into a colony of that sort was small.
The population grew mainly by its own natural increase, and the small size of the Mexican population in California was one of the main factors that led to the incorporation of the territory in the United States. It has been computed that the "Spanish" population, most of which was of Indian blood, never exceeded 3000 persons. Prior to the American occupation there were not more than 1200 foreigners in California, three-fourths of whom were American and most of the remainder British. Thus this immense territory, which became a part of the United States in 1848 as a result of the Mexican War, was relatively empty. The amount of Spanish blood in the California population of today must therefore be quite negligible.
The whole trend of migration was changed by the discovery of gold at the end of 1848. In February of that year there were not more than 2000 Americans in all California. By the end of December there were 6000. By July of 1849 this number had grown to 15,000 and six months later it had climbed to 53,000. The earliest arrivals naturally came from the nearby regions. Oregon alone contributed more than5000 from its scanty population. But every seaport of the Pacific sent a contingent, and the stream of men that poured into the gold fields was the most cosmopolitan group that had ever been seen in North America. InThe New York Tribunefor December 15, 1849, appears the following item from San Francisco:
"Foreign flags in the harbor: English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Hamburg, Bremen, Belgium, New Granadian, Dutch, Swedish, Oldenburgh, Chilean, Peruvian, Russian, Mexican, Hanoverian, Norwegian, Hawaiian, and Tahitian."
"Foreign flags in the harbor: English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Hamburg, Bremen, Belgium, New Granadian, Dutch, Swedish, Oldenburgh, Chilean, Peruvian, Russian, Mexican, Hanoverian, Norwegian, Hawaiian, and Tahitian."
When the territory became a State, on September 9, 1850, its population was at least 150,000, and a year later had probably reached a quarter of a million. Many of the Argonauts stayed but a few months, and, failing to become rich at a stroke, went elsewhere, so that the composition of the population changed markedly from week to week. It was almost exclusively a population of males. Few brought their families; and while prostitutes went to San Francisco from all accessible seaports, they contributed little or nothing to the permanent population.
The first Chinese immigrant found his way into California in 1847, but by the summer of 1852, 20,000 others had followed him. Probably 5000 Mexicans also had come into the territory which they had so recently lost.
By the census of 1860 it appears that most of theriff-raff had drifted out of the State again, and the basis of the permanent population had been laid. The total population was 380,000 of which nearly 40 per cent was foreign-born; the percentage reaching this high mark partly because of the number of Chinese. California had a population more nearly representative of the entire Union than did any other State—about equal numbers were contributed by New England, by the Middle States, by the Northwest, and by the lower Mississippi Valley. This population, it will be remembered, was almost entirely in the northern half of the State. The more homogeneous settlement of the southern half did not get under way until about the middle of the next period.
California differs profoundly from the other frontier regions of the United States in that it was settled from all sections of the country and not mostly from the adjoining States. The vast mineral wealth of the new State supplied it from the very beginning with abundant capital for local enterprises so that it was free from the debtor complex, so characteristic of the other frontier communities.
California faces westward on the Pacific and has developed into a unique and more or less self-sufficient section with a definite self-reliant character of its own.
While the West was thus filling up and the United States was reaching the Pacific Ocean, the States on the Atlantic continued to grow in power and population, largely through their own natural increase, but partly through the immigration of the period. French Canadians began to drift down into New England, as they have continued to do to this day. The single State of New York had by the end of the period a million foreign-born in its population, of whom half were Irish and one-fourth German. New Jersey had become one-fifth foreign-born, Connecticut one-sixth, Pennsylvania one-seventh. The racial character of this immigration was not particularly harmful, as it was mostly Nordic, but the large Roman Catholic element excited widespread alarm.
The arrival of large numbers of ignorant and destitute South Irish Catholics, who occupied the lowest social status here, led directly to the formation of a native American secret political party, nicknamed the "Know Nothings," because of their refusal to discuss or divulge their aims or actions. For the purpose of membership they defined the name Native American to mean a person all four of whose grandparents were born in this country. This party's policy, in the early stage of its career, was to act secretly, supporting the candidate who most nearly represented their views, regardless of his party affiliations. The party at once developed great strength, and in 1854 and 1855 carried State elections in Massachusetts, New York, Kentucky, California, and several other States. It played a large part in national politics in 1856, but its organization was disrupted by the increasing virulence of the slavery issue.
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHESShowing distribution of the 4447 Congregational Churches in the United States. Figures indicate number of churches in shaded areas in which there are too many to be shown by dots and circles. As the Congregational Church is largely identified with New England, the map shows in a general way the westward movement of people of New England origin.
The principle of the Know Nothing party was opposition to the political power of the large masses of newly arrived aliens. This was especially directed against the Catholic Church, because it was felt that their establishment of parochial schools was inimical to the public-school system, which the Americans of that time regarded as the palladium of their liberties. This hostility to Catholics was aggravated by the attempted use of public funds derived from general taxation for parochial schools and even more by the exemption claimed and often obtained from taxation of large ecclesiastical institutions as well as churches.
Further opposition to aliens arose from their organization into compact political units which quickly demoralized our municipal governments, a scandal which has existed down to this day.
All this led to the widespread belief that these immigrants, now arriving in large numbers, refused to accept wholeheartedly the customs, principles, and institutions of the country in which they had sought refuge. This belief still persists and has given rise in each generation since the days of the Know Nothing party, to similar powerful and secret anti-foreign organizations. Our alien elements are to this day extremely sensitive to the public discussion of any of these matters. In this respect, Americans probably have less freedom of speech and freedom of press than exist in any of the countries of Europe.
During the colonial period the natural increase of the Anglo-Saxon stock in New England had madeit a continual source of population for the rapidly opening West. No one State, however, contributed such a large element of the population of the subsequent United States as did Virginia, the largest and most populous of the thirteen Colonies. One cannot read the history of the movement westward of the American frontier without being impressed by the importance of the Old Dominion in supplying settlers for the West, first to Kentucky, thence to the States of the upper and lower Mississippi Valley, later to the Great Plains, and finally to the Southwest and the Pacific Coast.
But if Virginia has been the most fertile source of settlers, New England has more nearly put its stamp on American civilization; and this was made possible largely because there was an available emigrant stock in Massachusetts and her sister States, to carry this impress in person. Before the Civil War, however, the birth rate of the old white stock in New England had declined to the point where it was probably not replacing its own numbers.
In 1860 the religious unity of the United States had been somewhat impaired. The unity of language was as yet scarcely menaced. The unity of institutions, traditions, and culture was breached only temporarily. The racial unity of the country was little changed from 1790. The United States was still nine-tenths Nordic.
Earlier in these pages a description is given of theempty continent which lay open to settlement by the British stock on both sides of the Canadian border.
Let us see what use was made of this opportunity in the period from the end of Colonial times to the Civil War.
A continent was occupied and the territory of the Union was swept westward to the Pacific. The forests were cut down and the wild life destroyed. The Indians were evicted. The mineral wealth of the western mountains was ransacked. The coal was exploited, and the once fertile soil of the Southern States greatly depleted through the reckless growing of tobacco and cotton. Waste was the order of the day in America.
All this was perhaps inevitable, but never since Cæsar plundered Gaul has so large a territory been sacked in so short a time. Probably no more destructive human being has ever appeared on the world stage than the American pioneer with his axe and his rifle.
In 1860, at the end of this period, we find the essential elements of national unity still unchanged, but we were about to engage in a fratricidal war, which was to destroy the best blood of the nation. We had admitted large numbers of Irish and German immigrants who impaired, in the case of the Irish, our religious system and introduced certain undesirable racial elements. The Germans who came were largely Protestants and only temporarily disturbed our unity by clinging to their foreign language. Both of these elements, however, were pre-dominantly Nordic, and it was not until the next and final period that the unassimilable Alpines and Mediterraneans came here from southern and eastern Europe. The tragedy of the Civil War and the introduction of cheap labor were still to come, so that in 1860 the United States was at its high-water mark of national unity.
The Indians had been ruthlessly swept aside, as was unavoidable because a few hunting tribes could not be allowed to possess a continent, but the Negro question could have been postponed, and the men who died needlessly on Southern battle-fields could have been used to populate the States of the Far West.
In the next chapter we shall study the swamping of this American civilization, which reached its zenith in 1860.
XII
THE ALIEN INVASION
Theperiod 1860-1930, with which we are now dealing, is characterized by the end of free public land in the West about 1880. It is also marked by the great development of industries in the North and East, which created a demand for cheap labor, and attracted a mass immigration of non-British and non-Nordic workmen from southern and eastern Europe. This immigration for the most part went to the cities and industrial districts.
The Southern States, which had not entered upon an industrial expansion before the Civil War, did not welcome immigrants of the low-grade factory type, hence the South has remained characteristically American. One of the strange results of the Civil War has been that while the victorious North sold its birthright of culture, religion, and racial purity for a mess of industrial pottage, the South, though defeated and impoverished, retained its racial inheritance unimpaired.
Some of the earlier immigrants in this period sought the lands in the West, while they were still to be had. The land hunger having carried most of the energetic, ambitious, and able Nordic immigrants westward, the industrial expansion of New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and of some of the adjacent States resulted in an unfilled demand for low-gradefactory labor in the East. This demand was quickly recognized by the steamship companies, which began scouring Europe for immigrants to transport to America.
The most fertile recruiting ground for this type of humanity was in South Europe, Italy, the Balkan countries, and the provinces of the then Austrian Empire and Russia. Inducements were offered potential immigrants to come to America. There was no discrimination as to type or quality. Many criminals were rounded up, especially in southern Italy and Sicily, with the connivance if not the actual initiative of their governments.
As to the ratio of criminals to the native American population, some interesting figures have been compiled through a first-hand survey of 242 State and federal prisons in the United States during 1931-32. Most of the criminals referred to were committed for serious offenses. The criminals from northwestern Europe were well under (sometimes only one-quarter) their ratio to the general population. South Europe and eastern Europe were very much higher. The Filipinos were over twice as many as the proper allowance, native-born Negroes were two-and three-quarters above their allowance and the Mexicans were six and one-half times as many as their ratio to the general population would entitle them to be.
It was in this period that the Polish Jews began their tumultuous and frantic invasion, a flood which only recently has been checked, and that with thegreatest difficulty. The great mass of immigrants from South Poland, Galicia, and Russia were Ashkanazim Jews, descendants in part of Alpine Khozars, with a Mongol admixture, who entered the eastern Ukraine from Asia in the early centuries of our era. Many of the Khozars and their Khan were converted by Jewish missionaries and they formally accepted Judaism in 740A.D.It is doubtful whether there is a single drop of the old Palestinian, Semitic-speaking Hebrew blood among these East European Jews. They are essentially a non-European people. The language they speak, Jüdisch, or Yiddish, is a corrupt German of the Franconian dialect mixed with Slavic and Hebrew elements, which fact strengthens the tradition of a large migration of German Jews into Poland in the Middle Ages. It may be that the strain of these German Jews has died out, leaving only their language behind, but in any event the Polish Jews are now distinctly Alpine—a mixture of Slavs and of Asiatic invaders of Russia.
Exact figures of Jewish immigration are not obtainable until 1899, when this group was listed separately. Prior to that year probably 500,000 Jews had arrived; after that date nearly 2,000,000. From the beginning of this century the Jews made up 10 per cent of the total immigration into this country, and there are now more than 4,000,000 of them here, half of the number being in New York City. This is more than one-fifth of the Jews of the world.
Because they speak Yiddish, they are often colloquially referred to as "German Jews." But, in fact, the number who come from Germany is small, and, as said, the great bulk of them are more properly described as "Polish Jews" and are much despised socially by the true German Jews. Many of them are from those parts of Poland which were held by Russia prior to the World War. Immigration figures show the last place of residence of Jewish arrivals, 1899-1924, to be as follows:
Meanwhile the immigration from northern Europe declined, not only relatively but absolutely, and at the same time the native American, whose ancestry was pre-dominantly Nordic, began to be crowded to the wall. In certain sections of New England that progressive change soon became all too evident and has made them no longer American but foreign communities. The French Canadians, Irish, and Poles took over whole districts and occupied the abandoned farms. The Polish Jews, settling almost entirely in the larger cities, built up aGhetto population similar in most respects to the congested urbanism of their homeland.
Americans were so obsessed with the idea of a "Refuge for the Oppressed" that they even welcomed the draining into our country of that morass of human misery found in the Polish Ghettos. When the objection arose that there were already 1,000,000 Jews in New York City, an effort was made to divert this migration into Texas, where the wide-open spaces were supposed to provide room for the 7,000,000 Polish Jews.
The German Jews, who also came into this country in smaller numbers at the end of the last century, were of the Alpine type, closely resembling those from Poland, Galicia, and Russia. All of these Jews are in sharp contrast to the Sephardim Jews, a superior group, largely Mediterranean in race, a very few of whom came from Holland to America in Colonial times. These latter had reached Spain by way of North Africa and later fled to Holland to escape the Inquisition.
The immigration from Scandinavia was entirely Nordic. Sweden is purely Nordic, and Norway and Denmark are overwhelmingly so. Lithuania and North Poland are also Nordic lands, as are the German provinces along the Baltic; but South Poland and Galicia are Alpine, as are the majority of the immigrants who come from South Germany. Those from the provinces of the former Austrian Empire are mostly Alpine, although a few Nordics came from the Tyrol.
The Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor, and Armenia sent over practically only Alpine immigrants. French-speaking Switzerland was originally Burgundian territory and contributed some very valuable Nordic racial elements to America. Those from German-speaking Switzerland were largely Alpine.
The period of the great European migration to the United States covered just a century. Prior to that time, since the founding of the Union, most of the immigration had been English and Scotch. Up to 1860, as will be recalled, this British character of the immigration continued, except for the beginning of the great stream of Germans who have been, next to the English, the largest single element in our population.
The early Germans in the United States were, as previously described, mostly Alpines from the upper Rhine—the Palatinate and Swabia. In the '40's the area of the German emigration spread. At first to the western states and provinces, which were much more Nordic in character (Hesse, the Rhineland, Westphalia, Thuringia). All this region had an easy outlet by the Rhine to the seaports; moreover emigration was stimulated by the result of revolutionary activities, which forced many to leave.
After transportation began to be improved by railways, the main currents of emigration began to flow from central and eastern Germany. Emigration reached its first crest in the southwest and west of Germany in the middle of the '50's, its second in Central Germany toward the end of that decade, itsthird in the eastern part of the empire in the '70's and '80's. This later emigration was, on the whole, more Nordic than the earlier stream.
After the World War, when business conditions in Germany brought about some years of active emigration with the United States as its main objective, the current of emigration shifted again to the northwestern and southwestern districts (the former Nordic, the latter mainly so) and away from the northeast, which was even more Nordic.
The Scandinavian immigration, another main source of the Nordic population of the United States, dates almost entirely from the period since the Civil War. The largest volume was between 1877 and 1898, when more than 1,000,000 arrived. One-fifth of the entire population of Norway and Sweden moved to the New World, nearly all of them seeking farms in the States of the upper Mississippi Valley. There has been also an active immigration from Scandinavia since the end of the World War. In general, the United States was the only destination which a Scandinavian emigrant considered. Of those who left the homeland, not one Swede in fifty directed his course elsewhere than to America. No other emigrant population has shown such a single-minded interest in the United States, though the Norwegians have not been far behind, with 96 per cent of their departures destined to the United States; and the Danes, with 88 per cent.
Arriving at New York or sometimes Quebec, the immigrants made their way to Chicago or Detroit,and thence were distributed to the States west of the Great Lakes. The Norwegian movement was the earlier, beginning with the southern and central counties of that kingdom and gradually working its way north until arrivals were giving as their birthplaces little towns far north of the Arctic Circle.
In a few decades Norwegians owned six times as much farming land in the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and the Dakotas (four-fifths of the immigration being found in the States named) as did all the farmers in the "Old Country." No nationality has sent such a small percentage of its people into the cities—one in five of the whole, as compared with a half of the Germans, and a still higher percentage of the Irish and Italians, who seek an urban life.
This tendency to agricultural life and to prompt and whole-hearted Americanism has made the great body of Scandinavian immigrants one of the most valuable that America has received.
Meanwhile there continued a steady immigration of English and Irish. The latter envenomed our political life up to the last few years, by introducing into the United States their old political and religious feuds with Great Britain, and endeavoring to involve this country in their plans for Irish freedom. As a consequence, the friendly relations which should exist between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations have been kept disturbed, and a systematic policy of twisting the lion's tail was pursued, not merely by the Fenian agitators, but by Americandemagogues anxious to cultivate the "Irish vote."
Prior to 1880 only 5 per cent of the immigration was from southern and eastern Europe. Between 1860 and 1880 less than 250,000 immigrants from eastern and southern Europe came over. Then came the rush, and between 1890 and 1910 more than 8,000,000 immigrants reached our shores from southern and eastern Europe.
A group not homogeneous with the old native American population is the Italian. It began arriving after 1870, but did not reach large proportions until after 1890. Then it soon became a flood. From 1900 until the World War cut down immigration, the Italians far outnumbered all other peoples arriving on our shores.
Northern Italy has furnished us some fine types of immigrants. They are mostly Alpine with a Nordic admixture. Southern Italy, that is, Naples and Sicily, sent us almost exclusively a Mediterranean stock, which formed the great mass of Italian immigration and was of extremely inferior type. They are derived to some extent from the slaves whom the Romans gathered along the coasts of the Mediterranean from Syria to Morocco and employed on their large estates or latifundia. Among them, however, are to be found remnants of the pre-Nordic Mediterranean population of Italy.
In earlier decades the emigration from Italy was mostly of North Italians, commonly spoken of as "Genoese," but mainly from the crowded Italian Riviera west of Genoa. These went to neighboringcountries, particularly France, and to South America, few of them reaching the United States. When Italian mass emigration to this country began, it was from central and southern Italy and Sicily, who are of quite different racial stock from those of the more northerly districts.
The northern Italians are well thought of in the countries to which they have gone. The southern Italians seem to be far inferior in quality. While the country of their origin, Magna Græcia, two thousand five hundred years ago was the source of a large part of the world's progress in civilization, it is doubtful whether the reader can name a single man produced in that region during the last two thousand years, whose ability or eminence was such as to give him a worthy place in the world's history.
Add to this that the United States did not receive even the best of the southern Italian population, but in some instances rather the part that the local authorities were most happy to get rid of, and it is easy to understand how the Italian children in the American schools have shown themselves in almost every test to be a group apart, widely separated from every other white racial group and close to the Negro-Mulatto children in their ability.
Of the non-English-speaking peoples who have arrived in the United States during the last century, the 4,500,000 of Italians are outnumbered by only one group, namely, the nearly 6,000,000 Germans.
The Italians have been more inclined to return home than some others. In all the immigration, ithas been observed that a considerable proportion of the immigrants stayed only temporarily, sometimes for a season of work, sometimes for a generation or until they had accumulated enough money to return to the "Old Country" and live on their investments. It is usually figured that the arrivals should be diminished by about one-third to give the net of permanent immigration. There are of course exceptions—thus it is relatively rare for a Jew who came to the United States to move out of the country later.
During the sixteen years, 1908-23, the total alien emigration from the United States was 35 per cent of the total alien immigration, and the differences between the racial groups in respect to this tendency were immense.[10]
This ebb and flow of migration is often overlooked. It is impossible to understand the population figures without bearing it in mind.
While the departure of so many unassimilable aliens is highly favorable, the fact that migratory cheap labor thus floats into and out of the countryto compete with the native white, may of course have most serious effects socially and economically on the older stock. Fortunately, this has now been stopped by suitable restrictions.
Taking a long view over the whole history of immigration into the United States in the century and a half before 1930 one sees that approximately half of the total was from the countries of northern and western Europe, which are largely and some distinctly Nordic in population, and which sent us people who, in most cases, were easily assimilated by the Native Americans. Most of these came in during the first century of the Republic's life, as pointed out above.
After 1890 the tide turned strongly to southern and eastern Europe, the countries of which in 1913 (the last year of unrestricted immigration) sent 85 per cent of the total as against 15 per cent from northern and western Europe. The main contributors to this later stream, often called the "new immigration" as distinct from the "old immigration" were, in order of importance, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire.
FOOTNOTES:[10]The Chinese stood at the head of the list, emigrants from here exceeding immigrants by 30 per cent—that is, none were coming in as permanent residents, because of legislative restrictions; and some of the earlier arrivals were going home to stay. In a number of groups the outflow was more than half of the inflow—Bulgarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, 89 per cent; Turkish, 86 per cent; Koreans, 73 per cent; Rumanians, 66 per cent; Magyars, 66 per cent; Italians (South), 60 per cent; Cubans, 58 per cent; Slovaks, 57 per cent; Russians, 52 per cent.The lowest rate of re-migration was that of the Jews, 5 per cent. The Irish showed 11 per cent; Scotch and Welsh, 13 per cent; Armenians, 15 per cent; Dutch and Flemish, 18 per cent; Mexican, 19 per cent; English and French, 21 per cent; Scandinavian, 22 per cent; Syrian, 24 per cent; Lithuanian, 25 per cent; and Finnish, 29 per cent.
FOOTNOTES:
[10]The Chinese stood at the head of the list, emigrants from here exceeding immigrants by 30 per cent—that is, none were coming in as permanent residents, because of legislative restrictions; and some of the earlier arrivals were going home to stay. In a number of groups the outflow was more than half of the inflow—Bulgarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, 89 per cent; Turkish, 86 per cent; Koreans, 73 per cent; Rumanians, 66 per cent; Magyars, 66 per cent; Italians (South), 60 per cent; Cubans, 58 per cent; Slovaks, 57 per cent; Russians, 52 per cent.The lowest rate of re-migration was that of the Jews, 5 per cent. The Irish showed 11 per cent; Scotch and Welsh, 13 per cent; Armenians, 15 per cent; Dutch and Flemish, 18 per cent; Mexican, 19 per cent; English and French, 21 per cent; Scandinavian, 22 per cent; Syrian, 24 per cent; Lithuanian, 25 per cent; and Finnish, 29 per cent.
[10]The Chinese stood at the head of the list, emigrants from here exceeding immigrants by 30 per cent—that is, none were coming in as permanent residents, because of legislative restrictions; and some of the earlier arrivals were going home to stay. In a number of groups the outflow was more than half of the inflow—Bulgarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, 89 per cent; Turkish, 86 per cent; Koreans, 73 per cent; Rumanians, 66 per cent; Magyars, 66 per cent; Italians (South), 60 per cent; Cubans, 58 per cent; Slovaks, 57 per cent; Russians, 52 per cent.
The lowest rate of re-migration was that of the Jews, 5 per cent. The Irish showed 11 per cent; Scotch and Welsh, 13 per cent; Armenians, 15 per cent; Dutch and Flemish, 18 per cent; Mexican, 19 per cent; English and French, 21 per cent; Scandinavian, 22 per cent; Syrian, 24 per cent; Lithuanian, 25 per cent; and Finnish, 29 per cent.
XIII
THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA
Underthe impact of the "new immigration," most of it dating from the beginning of the present century, the complexion of the States which, as repeatedly shown, was almost wholly Nordic and Protestant, began to change rapidly. As concerned their native-born population, most of the States followed the rule, often mentioned in these pages, that a State is populated, in the first instance by its own increase, and secondly by movements from the States directly adjacent to it.
Maine, according to the 1930 census, with about one-tenth of the population of New England, is only five-eighths native stock,i.e., native white of native parents. These were mostly people born in Maine, with a few from surrounding States. Of its foreign stock, three-fourths were French Canadians.
New Hampshire presents a similar picture, with a slightly higher percentage of native Americans from nearby States.
Vermont's native population, aside from that portion born in the State itself, came from New Hampshire or Massachusetts and even more from New York. As in the two States previously mentioned,most of the foreign stock is from French Canada, and that which was not from Quebec is mostly Irish.
The Slavs and Italians have made little inroad in these three States.
Massachusetts in 1930 was more cosmopolitan, with 300,000 residents from other New England States and nearly 100,000 from New York. The old white stock, however, now makes up but one-third of the population of the Bay State. French Canadians, Irish, Italians, Poles, Russians, and Scandinavians, in the order named, have completely overwhelmed the native stock—even such a small country as Lithuania is represented in Massachusetts by more than 50,000 people.
Rhode Island's population, similarly, is now only one-third from the old stock. Its complexion is similar to that of Massachusetts. French Canadian Catholics control the government in many communities.
Connecticut, like Rhode Island, has about one-third old American stock. Here the Italians are the dominant element in number, with Irish, Slavs, and French Canadians almost equally numerous.
Thus New England, with its more than 8,000,000 population, has been virtually lost to the native Americans. Their birthrate in that area has long been far below the level necessary to prevent its dying out, and migration to the west is not now caused by the region's increase, as in Colonial times, but by an actual uprooting of families whose place is taken by others who in race, language, religion,culture, and institutions are quite out of harmony with American traditions.
A similar picture is observed when one turns to the 26,000,000 inhabitants of the Middle Atlantic States—the most populous, the wealthiest, and in many ways the most powerful section of the country.
The old stock makes up but one-third of New York's population. For its composition every State in the Union has been drawn on, with Pennsylvania and New Jersey furnishing the largest contingents. The State has well on to half a million Negroes—mostly in Manhattan, though the ratio of increase of Negroes in some of the other cities of the State vastly outstripped the ratio of increase of Whites between 1920 and 1930. Thus while the Whites of Buffalo increased 11 per cent in the decade, the Negroes increased 200 per cent; in Syracuse they increased twice, in Utica four times, in Rochester seven times, in Albany eight times, as fast as the whites—due, of course, to the migration of great numbers of mulattoes from the Southern States northward.
With its two million Jews, its million and a half Italians, its million Germans, and its three-quarters of a million each of Poles and Irish, together with substantial contingents from almost every other country on the map, the Empire State is scarcely able to meet the requirements of the Founders of the Republic, who, like Thomas Jefferson, feared above everything else the formation of an alien, urban proletariat as creating a condition under which ademocratic form of government could not function successfully.
Three-eighths of New Jersey's population were still of the old native stock in 1930, though half of these were born in other States, particularly New York and Pennsylvania. The rest of the population was a heterogeneous mixture of half a million British (largely Irish), half a million southern Italians, a quarter of a million Poles, a somewhat larger number of Germans, and so on down the list.
Pennsylvania makes a somewhat better showing, with more than half of its population still old native Americans. Of the later arrivals the largest number, well on to a million, was of British (including Irish) extraction. Italy and Poland each sent more than half a million, Germany not much less, Russia and Czechoslovakia each more than 200,000.
In both these divisions, then, the New England and the Middle Atlantic States, containing as they do more than a third of the entire population of the United States, the old American stock is now reduced to a minority. Fortunately, this cannot be said of any of the other major divisions of the country, though it is true of a few other individual States—Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota—where the foreign-born or their offspring are in a slight majority, but of good Nordic stock. On the whole, it is the northern and central parts of the Atlantic Coast that have become the worst un-American parts of the Union. The South Atlantic States play a much less important part nowadays than they did a century ago, in furnishing population to the rest of the country; but they are still American. In the following discussion their Negro population is ignored, and consideration is limited to the Whites, unless otherwise stated.
Delaware, with more than three-fifths of its people belonging to the old stock, has drawn no great additions in late years except from its neighbors on the west and south, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Its alien element is a cosmopolitan one in which no single group particularly preponderates.
Maryland is three-fourths native. Its industrial and commercial life, centered in Baltimore, has drawn a population from an unusually wide area, and this tendency has been greatly accentuated because many of the cosmopolitan group in Washington, D.C., actually reside in Maryland. Thus in addition to the heavy contingents from Pennsylvania and Virginia, it has groups of a thousand or more each from half the States in the Union. The bulk of its foreign population is made up of Germans, Poles, Russians (including Jews), and Italians, in addition to the British.
The District of Columbia, as the seat of the Federal Government, naturally draws its residents from every part of the United States, the largest element of what may be called its permanent population being from Virginia and Maryland. There is no large foreign element, but the Negroes, more than one-fourth of the whole, are nowhere more aggressive. It is generally understood that the reason Congresshas never been willing to grant the residents of the district the right to vote, even in local affairs, is that it would be likely to put the political control in the hands of this Negro block, which would always find unscrupulous white politicians ready to forget their own birthright and truckle to it.
Virginia is almost purely of old native stock, Virginian born. Its seaports and its proximity to the District of Columbia account for some residents from other States. After dealing in quarter millions and half millions to describe the foreign-born of the North Atlantic States, it is with something like incredulity that one notes only 23,000 foreign-born Whites of all sorts in the Old Dominion. The number who are native-born of foreign or mixed parentage, and therefore classified as "foreign stock," is twice as large; but many thereof are British. With Virginia, one reaches the region where the old native American holds his ground.
North Carolina makes a still more striking picture. In its population of more than three million, the 1930 census enumerators found scarcely 25,000 foreign-born or of foreign parentage. North Carolina is an active industrial State, yet it has been able to attain to its modern development from its own resources. Its neighbors on the North and South, together, have supplied a hundred thousand citizens; other regions have contributed a few; but the old white American stock in this State, as in many others of the South, has been largely self-sufficing.
South Carolina is not only of the American stock,but has had few outsiders, even from adjacent States. In addition to natives, a very few British and Germans, a very few Northerners, and moderate contingents from the nearby States make up its white population, which is still but slightly larger than the Negro element in the State.
Georgia fits into the same pattern, though it has attracted a few more of the "new immigration"—Slavs and Italians; and a few more Yankees, so that its population, on the whole, is somewhat more cosmopolitan.
Florida, on the other hand, has had an influx both of Northerners, who have almost changed the political complexion of the State; and of the foreign stock, largely Nordic, it is true, but with a West Indian element that is less assimilable. Of its million Whites, a sixth are of foreign stock, including almost every one of the nationalities found anywhere in the United States. But despite this somewhat cosmopolitan nature of its population, the State is overwhelmingly Nordic, like the other Southern commonwealths.
West Virginia, cut off from the Old Dominion by a technically questionable move at the beginning of the Civil War, showed by this very "secession" of its own that its population differed widely from that of the Tidewater. As pointed out earlier, the latter region was English and the mountains were Ulster Scotch, with a widely different outlook on life. The western part of the State had never been a great slave-holding region, partly because of the sentimentof the people, partly because there was little for a slave to do there that a free white could not do much better. To this day only one in sixteen of the population of West Virginia is colored, and it is still largely native white, despite the coal mines, which in other regions have come to depend largely on the labor of Slavs. In the 10 per cent of its foreign-stock population West Virginia has a scattering of Slavs, as also of almost every other people, but the largest element is British, the next German.
Kentucky offers no exception to the rule that the Southern States are still almost wholly native white. The only important foreign element is a small German one. It still retains a little of the tendency which made it, a century or more ago, one of the chief colonizing States, for it has more of its native sons scattered throughout the Union, than has almost any other Southern State.
Virginia still sends out a surplus population, and Georgia notably has done so, though mainly to the States nearest at hand. Kentucky and Tennessee have sent out pioneers to more distant regions. At present, for instance, they have as many representatives on the Pacific Coast as have all the South Atlantic States together.
Tennessee's racial make-up is very similar to that of Kentucky, although there is still the marked contrast in the "atmosphere" of the two States, which has existed from the beginning.
Alabama's composition is not very dissimilar to the two just mentioned, save that the Italian elementis a little larger. Its main foreign stocks, however, are British and German.
What has been said of these States applies almost literally to Mississippi. The Whites, forming a little less than half of the total population, are almost all of the old native stock. The emigration of Whites (and of Negroes, too, for that matter) from the cotton States during the last fifteen or twenty years has been largely due to the ravages of the boll weevil, which made cotton less profitable and prevented many small farmers from making even their expenses.
Georgia has been hit harder than any other State, probably, by this movement out of the State and thousands of acres of good farming land are now lying idle there, for lack of hands to work them. The same holds good to some extent in other States of the region. Many of the small farmers have moved westward, first perhaps to Texas or Oklahoma, and then on to the Pacific Coast, the automobile now taking the place of the covered wagon of their forebears.
Arkansas differs in no important respect from Mississippi, save in having a much smaller proportion of Negroes. Its old white population has likewise begun to move, though more often northward, as to Missouri or Kansas. But Oklahoma and, also, Texas have been the great outlets for the Arkansas farmers.
The climate and resources of Louisiana have attracted some 50,000 Italians—a small element compared with those in the Northeastern States, but large for the South. Louisiana has always been more cosmopolitan than any of the other Southern States, and this is still the case, yet 85 per cent of its Whites are of the old native stock. Most of those not born in the State have come from States directly adjoining. While to a certain extent there has been the usual interchange, Louisianians going to other nearby States, mainly Texas, nevertheless Louisiana has been relatively unimportant in settling other States since the Civil War.
Its population is less homogeneous than most of the Southern States. The northern part of the State, with a majority of the inhabitants and with political control, is made up largely of Nordic Protestants who have come in from Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, or elsewhere, and who differ little from the inhabitants of those States. The southern part of Louisiana, on the contrary, is largely Roman Catholic in religion, and to a large extent French-speaking. In some towns there are no public schools. The parochial schools teach the children in French, and the Catholic Church has made particular efforts to perpetuate the use of that language. The State Convention which revised the constitution in 1921 made the literacy qualification for the exercise of the electoral franchise, the ability of a citizen to write his application for registration "in the English languageor his mother tongue."
The State has the highest rate of illiteracy of any in the Union, whether one considers the total population including Negroes, or limits the figures to the native Whites. It has been part of the United States for one hundred and thirty years, but United States officials, when going into many parts of it, still have to be accompanied by an interpreter. With only two or three exceptions, every bishop who has been in charge of Catholic interests in Louisiana since Thomas Jefferson's day has been foreign-born and foreign-trained.
For such reasons the feeling of separate interests and lack of unity and national identity have tended to continue; and when the "Cajan" representatives attend the State legislature at Baton Rouge, they address the House in eloquent English, but among themselves, discuss their program in a French patois.
Oklahoma, due to its peculiar history, is one of the cosmopolitan States. When the territory was thrown open to settlement in the great land rush of April 22, 1889, speculators from all parts of the United States were attracted to the scene. But most of the settlers in the northern part came from Kansas or Missouri and in the southern, from Texas or Arkansas. In the next year, when the territory was formally organized, one-third of its population was Indian or Negro. Subsequent land allotments and colonization tended to perpetuate this dual origin of the settlers, but after the State became a famous oil field, in the early years of the present century, the population became so mixed that this distinction was partly lost. Meanwhile the Indian population was not only swamped by the Whites, but largely intermarried with them, partly because Indian women had titles to valuable oil land. At present Oklahoma is still credited with nearly 30 per cent of all the Indians in the United States, though it is supposed that not more than one-fourth of these are full-blood, and many of those who are legally counted as Indians have but a negligible amount of Indian heredity. The Creeks and a few others have mixed to some extent with Negroes, but this has not been general.
Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas are still the principal sources of Oklahomans, in the order named; but there is not a State in the Union which is not represented here, many of them with large contingents. The foreign stock is of equally cosmopolitan background, but makes up only one-sixteenth of the whole. Considering the geographical location, it includes a surprisingly large number of Canadians.
Texas contains nearly half a million people of foreign stock, the German element being by far the largest. Second in importance among the foreign stocks is a Czechoslovakian population which has settled largely in the southeastern part. The Germans are mainly to the west of them. The State began to attract Italians just before the World War. The British element is important, while Galveston has long been largely dominated by Jews.
North Texas enjoyed a boom in 1875 and 1876 when a flood of homeseekers poured in with their emigrant wagons. Many of these were farmers fromthe Middle West who had been impoverished by the great grasshopper plague.
Western Texas was settled late, and periods of drought, such as that at the time of the World War, largely depopulated some sections, farmers packing up what they could carry and abandoning everything else to move into a region where nature was less reluctant to aid them.
Texas is still the offspring of the lower Mississippi Valley States, but commercial development and the oil industry have brought in many Northerners, particularly from the Central States. On the other hand, the State's contribution to Oklahoma dwarfs all the other streams that have gone out from it; but it has also contributed liberally to New Mexico and Arizona and in recent years to California.
Turning back now to the East North Central States, which comprise those originally carved out of the Northwest Territory of 1787, one again encounters the full tide of the so-called "new immigration." Here the old native stock is scarcely more than a numerical majority—fourteen million out of twenty-five, to be more exact; a striking contrast to the Southern States, which we have just been considering, where it still forms nine-tenths or more of the total white population.
Five millions of the later arrivals in the North Central States are Nordics, but a number almost equally large are Alpines. Half a million Mediterraneans are present in the Italian immigration, while the area from which the congress of the Confederation, as one of its last acts, declared that Negro slaves should be forever excluded, has acquired nearly a million free Negroes.
Ohio is still two-thirds native, and its great industrial development has drawn population from all sides, though four out of five of its citizens still find their names on the birth records of the State itself. Besides giving population to all its neighbors it has, like the other States of this region, sent a stream westward, not merely to such places as Kansas and Colorado, but particularly to the Pacific Coast.
While the German element in Ohio which, half a century ago, made such cities as Cincinnati centers of Teutonic kultur, is still the most important numerically, it is outnumbered by the Poles, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Lithuanians, and the like, if they are taken together. The easy access across the Great Lakes has given Ohio, like her sister States, an important Canadian element.
Indiana, most American of States in its early period, still makes an excellent showing, with nearly 85 per cent of its population native white of native parentage. In the interchange of inhabitants it still continues, as it did in the days of its founding, to draw an important Southern element from across the Ohio River. The State of Ohio does the same. The population still tends to move westward, not eastward, from Indiana, taking with it some of the best of American family lines and the purest of American traditions.
The half million of foreign stock within the borders of the State are at least half Nordic. No single group of the Slavs or Mediterraneans is represented heavily, although there are a few of all those national elements.
The people of Indiana deserve recognition for the way they have preserved their heritage. It is no accident that the "Indiana school" of writers has long sounded the authentic American note in literature, in striking contrast to the decadent tone of the output in some of the Atlantic Coast centers where the dominant element is quite un-American.
Illinois, by contrast, is barely more than half native, and the scandals of its politics in regions where the alien vote is self-conscious, have long been manifest to every newspaper reader. With 329,000 Negroes, according to the 1930 census, Illinois ranks in this respect only after Pennsylvania and New York, among the Northern States; but corrupt political rings have made of the Negro an important factor in the government of Chicago, as he has not been in New York or Philadelphia.
Of its foreign-born stock, Nordics are far below a million, as compared with a million and a half of Alpines and a quarter of a million of Mediterraneans. Under the pressure of this competition, the old native stock has shown a strong tendency to move West and South. Texas and Arkansas, for example, have drawn more heavily from Illinois than they have from any other Northern State, and Illinois has also been the greatest single contributor to the development of the Pacific Coast.
Michigan is now just half native. Its geographical location has attracted more than half a million Canadians, many of them belonging to the French Alpine stock there. In the foreign stock as a whole, Alpines outnumber Nordics not far from two to one. Among the 100,000 Italians are many Northerners in the copper mines—big fellows so unlike the Sicilian and Neapolitan to whom the American on the Atlantic Coast is accustomed, that he does not recognize them as Italians. These northern Italians, as previously noted, are not Mediterraneans, but mostly Alpine with remnants of Nordic blood from the days of the Lombards and Goths.
Wisconsin has almost escaped the Negro invasion of the North, so its three million inhabitants are at least white; but the native stock is in a minority, due largely to the great German inrush of the last century. With this came many Scandinavians.
From 1860 to 1880 the immigrant nationalities ranked in the order—German, Norwegian, Dane, and Swede. The only difference since then is that they rank in the order—German, Norwegian, Swede, and Dane. The great Swedish tide of immigration in the last half of the nineteenth century did not acquire full force until the Norwegian had passed its crest.
As late as 1900, three-fourths of the people of Wisconsin were of foreign parentage, and the Germans made up half of these. Milwaukee, with its Socialist administration, had long been conspicuously the center of German influence in the United States.Up to 1843, was a Yankee village, earnestly trying to supplant Chicago as the center of the Midwest. By 1856 a third of its population was German. By 1890 one-half of its population was of German parentage and one-fourth actually of German birth. That census year, however, saw the high tide of Germanism in Milwaukee. Poles, Russians, Slovaks, and Italians have modified since then the racial character of the city, which is only one-third German at the present time. In the characteristic political color of the State some students profess to see evidence of the fact that many of the German immigrants were revolutionists fleeing from the Fatherland.
In Minnesota, the Germans outnumber any single group, although less numerous than the three Scandinavian groups put together, so the State is correctly thought of as Scandinavian. Considerably less than half of its population is of the old American stock, but the State is overwhelmingly Nordic, the 150,000 Slavs who have invaded it in recent decades being of little account in its 2,500,000 population. Since the days of its founding, Minnesota has drawn from Canada a desirable element, and has given freely in exchange.
Due partly to its relatively late settlement, the State has not been one of those which have contributed heavily to its neighbors. Its greatest outflow has been to the Pacific Coast, as its inhabitants became prosperous enough to move to a milder climate in their old age.
Iowa, of about the same population as Minnesota,is two-thirds native and equally Nordic. It has contributed heavily to the prairie and mountain States, and also to the Pacific Coast, but the standing joke which ascribes to Iowa the parentage of all Southern Californians seems to be not quite exact—at least California as a whole has received more of its population during the past generation from Illinois, Missouri, New York, and Ohio, than from Iowa, which stands only fifth in the list.
Iowa, being pre-dominantly agricultural, has felt particularly the unfavorable status of agriculture since the World War. During the decade 1920-30, three out of every five of the villages in the State actually lost in population, the people having either moved into the cities or "gone West." Here as elsewhere, the small village seems unable to meet the needs of the inhabitants. One of the real problems of statesmanship in the near future is to work out a social and economic system under which a larger part of the old native stock, and particularly the most intelligent portion of it, can live under the favorable biological conditions of the small village.
Missouri has nearly a quarter of a million Negroes, in contrast with such States as the three last discussed, in which the colored population is negligible. But of its white population, three-fourths is native, the rest mostly German. Slavs and Italians have only begun to get a footing. On the whole, the State is strongly Nordic and sends out large contingents of Nordics to Illinois on the East, to Kansas and Oklahoma, and to the mountain and coast Stateswestward. The importance of the Missouri stock, coming to a large extent from that of Virginia, has been much greater than is generally recognized, in the settlement of the whole West.