Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/27

Rh represent the tips and downs of business and commercial prosperity. The business panics of 1837, '57, '73, and '93 are accurately recorded, taking about two years to make their influence felt. In short, although the chart on page 6 shows simply the number of immigrants who have come to the United States since we began to take immigration statistics, it is a most accurate financial history during that time.

The year 1881-'82 marks the climax of the older immigration and the beginning of the new. That from Ireland, which received its impetus from the horrible condition of their native land thirty-five years before, was still continuing with undiminished force. That from Germany reached in 1882 its maximum of 193,000. It, too, received its first impulse in 1847, in the depressed industrial conditions in which revolutions and political disturbances had left the country, but there is no special reason for a maximum during that year, unless it be a knowledge of the peculiar opportunities then offered by this country and the infectious example of others who were starting in this direction.

The Germans coming to the United States have been of different types. First, in the early part of the century, Pennsylvania Germans were hyper-orthodox Lutherans; in 1848, Free-Thinkers, followed by Roman Catholics and Social Democrats.

The Scandinavian, which completes the list of the distinctive elements of this older immigration, seems to have emigrated, not because of any serious political or industrial conditions like the others just mentioned, but because of the special inducements which this country offered him to pursue here the same vocations to which he was accustomed at home with the hope of greater rewards.

The horizon of the Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians was filled with the one radiant idea of making for themselves a home in this country, and of becoming in the highest sense American citizens.

Such an immigration as that of 1882 represents the natural increase of a population of about 50,000,000 people. In other words, we had then a foreign population almost equal to our own, contributing to our growth by its natural increase.

To the ordinary person living outside the great cities, the designation "immigrant" brings to mind the Irish, Germans, or Scandinavians — the people just mentioned — who, even up to 1885, constituted such an overwhelming majority of the total arrivals at our ports. They may still be seen everywhere — in the manufacturing trades or as shop-keepers, household servants, merchants, and professional men. They have bettered their condition in life and added to the general prosperity of the country as well.

Seeing them on all sides, the uninformed observer fails to realize that their compatriots are no longer coming, but in their stead are new forces — Mediterranean, Oriental, and Slavic races — whose predominance in numbers at present is absolute.

The Carpathian and Baltic Mountains are nearer the mining districts of Pennsylvania today than Boston was 50 years ago.

In 1882 a circle drawn over the map of Europe, taking in all points from which we were receiving immigrants, would have its center in the city of Paris. In 1902 a circle of the same size, including the source of the present immigration to the United States, would have its center located in Constantinople.

In classifying immigration, the Immigration Bureau relies in the main upon differences in language. Let us now attempt to briefly note their more marked