# The Old World in the New

Towards the New World
THE OLD WORLD IN THE NEW
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PAST AND PRESENT IMMIGRATION TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
BY
EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin
Author of “Social Control,” “Social Psychology,” “The Changing Chinese,” “Changing America,” Etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1914
​Copyright, 1913, 1914, by
THE CENTURY Co.
Published, October, 1914
Printed in U. S. A.
PREFACE
“Immigration,” said to me a distinguished social worker and idealist, “is a wind that blows democratic ideas throughout the world. In a Siberian hut from which four sons had gone forth to America to seek their fortune, I saw tacked up a portrait of Lincoln cut from a New York newspaper. Even there they knew what Lincoln stood for and loved him. The return flow of letters and people from this country is sending an electric thrill through dwarfed, despairing sections of humanity. The money and leaders that come back to these down-trodden peoples inspire in them a great impulse toward liberty and democracy and progress. Time-hallowed Old-World oppressions and exploitations that might have lasted for generations will perish in our time, thanks to the diffusion by immigrants of American ideas of freedom and opportunity.”
Rapt in these visions of benefit to belated humanity, my friend refused to consider any possible harm of immigration to this country. He did not doubt it so much as ignore it. How should the well-being of a nation be balanced against a blessing to humanity?
“Think what American chances mean to these poor people!” urged a large-hearted woman in settlement work. “Thousands make shipwreck, other thousands are disappointed, but tens of thousands do realize something of the better, ​larger life they had dreamed of. Who would exclude any of them if he but knew what a land of promise America is to the poor of other lands?” Her sympathy with the visible alien at the gate was so keen that she had no feeling for the invisible children of our poor, who will find the chances gone, nor for those at the gate of the To-be, who might have been born, but will not be.
I am not of those who consider humanity and forget the nation, who pity the living but not the unborn. To me, those who are to come after us stretch forth beseeching hands as well as the masses on the other side of the globe. Nor do I regard America as something to be spent quickly and cheerfully for the benefit of pent-up millions in the backward lands. What if we become crowded without their ceasing to be so? I regard it as a nation whose future may be of unspeakable value to the rest of mankind, provided that the easier conditions of life here be made permanent by high standards of living, institutions and ideals, which finally may be appropriated by all men. We could have helped the Chinese a little by letting their surplus millions swarm in upon us a generation ago; but we have helped them infinitely more by protecting our standards and having something worth their copying when the time came.
Edward Alsworth Ross.
The University of Wisconsin,
    Madison, Wisconsin,
    September, 1914.
CONTENTS