Aliens or Americans?

Excerpt

UNGUARDED GATES

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,And through them presses a wild, motley throng—Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Celt, and Slav,Flying the old world's poverty and scorn;These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.In street and alley what strange tongues are these,Accents of menace alien to our air,Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!O Liberty, White Goddess! is it wellTo leave the gates unguarded? On thy breastFold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,Lift the downtrodden, but with the hand of steelStay those who to thy sacred portals comeTo waste the gifts of freedom. Have a careLest from thy brow the clustered stars be tornAnd trampled in the dust. For so of oldThe thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome.And where the temples of the Cæsars stoodThe lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

—Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

CONTENTS

PrefaceIntroduction, by Josiah StrongI.The Alien AdvanceII.Alien Admission and RestrictionIII.Problems of Legislation and DistributionIV.The New ImmigrationV.The Eastern InvasionVI.The Foreign Peril of the CityVII.Immigration and the National CharacterVIII.The Home Mission OpportunityA.Tables of Immigrants Admitted and DebarredB.The Immigration LawsC.Work of Leading Denominations for the Foreign PopulationD.BibliographyINDEX

Coming AmericansThe Inflowing TideEllis Island Immigration StationReceiving Room at Ellis IslandDetained for Special ExaminationAn Appeal from the Special Inquiry Board to Commissioner WatchornThe Landing at the Battery in New YorkA German FamilyItalian and Swiss GirlsA Group of Twelve Different NationalitiesThree Types of ImmigrantsA Group of Immigrants Just Arrived at Ellis IslandAn Italian Family Crowded in a New York TenementFour NationalitiesPortuguese and Spanish ChildrenAn Italian Sunday School in New EnglandImmigration at the Port of New York for 1906Immigrant Distribution by States for 1905Immigrant Distribution by Races:ScandinavianCanadian and BritishIrishGermanicFrench and IbericSlavicChanges in Sources of Immigration Causing Increase of IlliteracyCountries from which the Slavs ComeDistribution of Slavs in the United StatesWave of Immigration for Eighty-seven YearsColored Chart of Races of Immigrants for 1905

PREFACE

It is not a question as to whether the aliens will come. They have come, millions of them; they are now coming, at the rate of a million a year. They come from every clime, country, and condition; and they are of every sort: good, bad, and indifferent, literate and illiterate, virtuous and vicious, ambitious and aimless, strong and weak, skilled and unskilled, married and single, old and young, Christian and infidel, Jew and pagan....