A POLYGLOT NATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 961, 2 March 1911, Page 4

A POLYGLOT NATION.

HOW THK UNITED STATES IS BRING PROPER!).

The new edition of Mr James Bryce’s great work, “The American Commonwealth” (Macmillan. 2is.) —a book written by an Englishman and accepted by Americans as the standard authority—contains a highly interesting new chapter on the influx of immigrants into the United Stales from Central and Southern Europe. Mr Biyee writes :

“Alter IS9O, as the arrivals from Ireland and Germany began slowly to decline, Central ami Southern Europe became the main source of the gigantic flood of new immigrants, whose total numbered in 1882 789,000, and in 1907 1,285,000. Czechs, Boles, Serbs, Slovaks, Croats, Magyars, Finns, Russians these last nearly all Jews —Slovenes, Rouraans (mostly from Transylvania) and Greeks, with a smaller amount of Syrians, Armenians, and Bulgarians, have (taken together) latterly far outnumbered the entering Teutons, as the Italians have far outnumbered the Irish.

“ It is computed that over eight millions in all entered between 1900 and the end of 1909, and that over twenty.seven millions have entered in the seventy years between 1840 and 1910. “ The early immigrants, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians, usually applied for and obtained citizenship very soon after their arrival. The political organisations laid hold of them and got them enrolled, desiring their votes. The more recent immigrants, and especially the Italians and Slavs, show less desire, and have not been looked after by the parties with the same assiduity.

“ In 1900 more than half of the immigrants of those races are slill aliens. It is generally the more ignorant, and especially those who do not settle on the land, who so remain. The Jewish immigrants, ignorant as they often are, are keen-witted, and as they mean to stay in America they appreciate the advantage of becoming citizens at once. Numbering in New York about a million all told, they are already a power in politics. Many have joined Tammany Hall, and as they are even more cohesive than the Irish, their share in the control of that organisation promises to be a large one. Not a few of the immigrants have brought with them from Russia or Eastern Germany or Poland the tenets of Socialism, and some few the doctrines of a revolutioifary Anarchism. The murder of President M’Kinley by such an one (born, however, in America), together with the inflammatory harangues delivered by adherents of this extreme creed, have done much to draw on them, even on those who nowise deserve it, the suspicion of native Americans.

In the United States the uneasiness which this invasion excites takes shape in the question so often on men’s lips, Will the new immigrants be good Americans ? In the most familiar sense of these words, the inquiry can be easily answered. If by the words ‘good Americans’ is meant ‘ patriotic Americans,’ patriotic they will be. They will be proud of America, loyal to the flag, quick to discard their European memories and sentiments, eager to identify themselves with everything distinctive of their new country,” The immigrants show a much higher birth - rate than the American-born, and this naturally increases their comparative numbers every year. In Massachusetts the birth-rate of the foreign-born is three times as large as that among the nativeborn, and the decline in fecundity among American-born as compared with foreign-born all over the Union is indubitable. The point from the British point of view is: How long will the United States remain distinctively Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic ? and, How long shall we be able to talk of “ our cousins across the ocean” ? In another chapter Mr Bryce discusses the negro problem “He (the negro) is by nature

affectionate, docile, pliable, submissive, and in these respects most unlike the Red Indian, whose conspicuous traits are pride and a certain dogged inflexibility. He is seldom cruel or vindictive — which the Indian often is—nor is he prone to violence, except when spurred by lust or drink. His intelligence is rather quick thau solid, and though not wanting in a sort of shrewdness, he shows the childishness as well as the lack of self-control which belongs to the primitive peoples. A nature highly impressionable, emotional, and unstable is in him appropriately accompanied by a love of music, while for art he has —unlike the Red Indian—no taste or turn whatever. Such talents as he has runs to words ; he learns languages easily, and speaks fluently, but shows no capacity for abstract thinking, for scienliiic inquiry, or for any kind of invention. “ It is, however, not so conspicuously on the intellectual side that his weakness lies, as in the sphere of will and action. Having neither foresight nor ‘ roundsight ’ he is heedless and unthrifty, easily elated and depressed, with little tenacity of purpose, and but a feeble wish to better his condition. Sloth, like that unto which the negroes of the Antilles have sunk, cannot be generally charged upon the American coloured man, partly perhaps because the climate is less enervating and nature less bountiful.” Ihe passing of the years brings the negro no nearer socially to the white man:— “Except on the Pacific coast, a negro never sits down to dinner with a white man, in a railway refreshment room. You never encounter him at a private party. He is not received in an hotel of the better sort, no matter how rich he may be. He will probably be refused a glass of soda-water at a drug store. He is not shaved in a place frequented by white men, not even by a barber of his own colour. He worships in a church of his own. No native white woman would dream of receiving his addresses. “ Kindly condescension is the best he can look for, accompanied by equality of access to a business or profession. Social equality is utterly out of his reach, and in many districts he has not even equality of economic opportunity, for the white labourer may refus to work with him, and his colour may prove a bar to his obtaining employment except of the lowest kind. Mr Bryce concludes : We arrive therefore, at three conclusions: — I. —The negro will stay in North America. II. —He will stay locally intermixed with the white population. 111. —He will stay socially distinct as an alien element, unabsorbed and unabsorbable. The great American Republic is indeed a nation made of many nations. Its problems are its own. No nation has ever had to face them before.