Baptist History Homepage
American Home Missions Among Foreign Populations
By Henry C. Vedder

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Magnitude of the Problem

      Every American problem is also a home-mission problem, but this is especially true of the immigration problem. We are concerned with it equally as patriots and as Christians, as lovers of God and lovers of our country. For three-quarters of a century a steady stream of immigration has been pouring into our country, in ever-increasing volume. Imagine the United States invaded by foreign armies landing troops on our shores at an average rate of 20,000 a week. Yet that is almost exactly what happened in the decade from 1904 to 1914, except that it was a peaceful invasion, not military. Between 1820 and 1920 nearly 35,000,000 foreigners entered the United States it is as if France had dumped her entire population on our shores. This in itself constitutes a problem such as no nation in the world has hitherto had to face and solve.

      Since 1900 the character of this immigration has greatly changed. Nineteenth-century immigration was mostly from Great Britain and the peoples of Central and Northern Europe fully 75 per cent, was of that "Nordic race" of which we hear so much, closest akin to the original settlers of North America. More than 70 per cent, of twentieth-century immigration has been from Southern and Southeastern Europe. Before 1900 the largest number of immigrants came from Great Britain, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, in that


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numerical order. Since 1900, the order has been: Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Slavic peoples, outnumbering the former leaders two to one. These people differ from the original settlers and their descendants more than the "Nordics," are less easily assimilated and therefore constitute a more difficult problem.

      The problem is made still more difficult by the high percentage of illiteracy in these newcomers, in some races over 50 per cent., and the average is fully 25 per cent., while the illiteracy among native whites is only two per cent. On the other hand, these people are eager to have their children educated and send them by millions to our public schools, so that the illiteracy of persons over ten years of age of foreign parentage is but six-tenths per cent, for girls, and eight-tenths per cent, for boys, while illiteracy among those of native white parentage is 2.2. Some other features of the problem are these:

      (I) Four-fifths of this new immigration tends to concentrate in five of the North Atlantic States Massachusetts, Con- necticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and one Middle Western State, Illinois. Germans, Slavs, and Scandinavians go West; Hungarians, Italians, and Russian Jews stay in the East.

      (2) A marked decrease of the birth-rate occurs among these people, though it is still higher than that of the native population.

      (3) A rise occurs in their standard of living, but a lowering of the general average, owing to the effect of their com- petition on wages. (4) Marked increase of social burdens everywhere takes place, such as unemployment, disease, pauperism, insanity, crime.

      Restricted immigration, the policy deliberately adopted by the United States, and likely to be maintained, if not made more stringent, may be expected to help the solution of this problem at least to prevent its being made more difficult. Careful consular inspection of immigrants


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before embarkation, which has been proposed but not as yet adopted, might do much to exclude the physically and mentally unfit. We cannot afford to let European nations make this country a common dumping-ground for their refuse populations; they should be made to take care of their own criminals and paupers we have plenty of our own.

Americanization

      Few things are oftener topics for the orator and for conversation, and few things are so little understood. What is the much talked of "100 per cent. American"? Is he the man who shouts most loudly and waves the flag most frantically? There were profiteers during the late war who waved the flag with one hand and picked your pockets with the other; shall we account them 100 per cent. Americans? Josiah Strong wisely said, "Every man is an American who has American ideals, the American spirit, American conceptions of life, American habits." The man who can measure up to that definition is an American, whether he has spent one day in this country or all his life. The man who falls far below that definition is no American, though he and his ancestors have lived on American soil for generations. You cannot make that kind of Americans with a club, as some zealous people have tried to do. You cannot make that kind of Americans in a few days by any sort of factory process. To make Americans of that type takes time and tact and education in the broadest sense of that much abused word. In the meantime let us native Americans remember that we have something to receive as well as to give, something to learn as truly as something to teach. So shall our civilization be enriched by the best elements of the cultures that these people are bringing with them.

      What are American ideals:

      1. Freedom under law, not lawless freedom. This means that all laws are to be obeyed and enforced, so long as they remain unrepealed.

      2. High standard of social morality no double stand-ards in sex or business.

      3. Good social habits cheerful observance of all regulations for common good and decency no spitting on sidewalks, no scattering of rubbish, no reckless driving of cars. Consideration to be always shown to the other man.

      4. Genuine loyalty to American institutions, which does not mean that our constitution and laws are perfect, and that anybody who proposes their alteration is a traitor.

      5. Freedom of speech, combined with responsibility for all utterances. Speech not to be restrained by injunctions, and governmental or police regulations, but offenses against the laws to be punished by whomsoever committed.