Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/411

Rh of the most distinguished names in the annals of American achievement claim a foreign birthplace. But must we stop here—is this all that the foreign element has done for American civilization? If so, the debt of the United States to the stranger is not great, and immigration may with good cause have restrictions placed upon it.

Scarcely were the American colonies founded when the anti-immigration sentiment began to develop. The colonies of New England and, to a lesser degree, Virginia looked with suspicion upon aliens arriving upon their shores, and for a time almost inhibited the movement. Pennsylvania and New York, on the other hand, encouraged immigration, and their more rapid progress over the first-mentioned must be generally admitted, although other factors in their advancement entered into the consideration which space will not here admit of being dwelt upon. Again, this anti-immigration sentiment has manifested itself almost continuously since 1790, sometimes actively, sometimes almost dormant, but never entirely disappearing. We have the results in the Chinese exclusion act, in the various laws now in existence imposing restrictions upon it, in the various laws now proposed, creating an educational test. Whether these measures, actual and prospective, are good or baneful I do not purpose to discuss, but shall pass to a cursory review of racial traits.

We find on comparison that a far greater proportion of the delinquent classes are found among the inhabitants of foreign birth than among those of native ancestry, and even those born in this country of alien parents furnish a larger ratio to these classes than those of purely American parentage. Of the three great elements in the foreign population represented by the Teutonic, the Celtic, and the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, the proportionate numbers furnished to these classes by the Celtic race exhibit a remarkable predominance over either of the others, and this excessive defectiveness, we discover, also extends to the offspring of Celtic parents. The Britons and Germans show little variance from each other in their contributions to these classes, and the Scandinavians exhibit a slightly higher percentage in such contributions over the two last mentioned. The other nationalities represented in the population can scarcely with fairness be drawn into the comparison on account of the recent date at which they have begun to arrive in any considerable numbers; nevertheless, the records of our criminal courts contain the names of many Italians, and already the Hungarians and Poles, the most miserable and degraded representatives of the Caucasian race who cross our borders, are largely numbered among the dependent classes. We have also to notice in these classes a much greater