The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-03 00:00:00

DECREASE OF AMERICAN IMMIGRATION.

(From the New York Times.)
It is estimated by persons familiar with the rate of
immigration that if the average be no greater the next
six months than the past, there will be a falling off in
1856 of some 150,000 to 180,000 in the number of fo-
reigners arriving on our shores. This is a weighty fact,
and deserves- careful consideration from those who, in
business or morals, are speculating on the future of our
country. Probably 80,000 of those who stay at home
are Germans ; the rest of the deficit is made up almost
en ;irely of Irish. If each of these immigrants had con-
sumed or spent $4 in New York as he passed through,
't would make a difference next year to the city of some
$700,000 in income. If each had possessed, in ready
money, the average which the returns from Castle Gar-
den show at present—namely, about sBo—it would
diminish the import of specie into the country by about
$13,500,000 ; money which is not even an exchange,
but is so much clear addition of wealth. Then all these
people consume our products ; they rent our houses,
they wear our clothes, they eat our corn, wheat, and
rye ; our beef, mutton, and fish ; they buy our timber
and brick, our iron and coal ; they read our books,
and papers, and magazines. Setting down the average
cost of living as $2 a week to each man, woman,
and child—which would be a low estimate—and sup-
posing that they, at least, earn all they consume by
their labour, we have a loss next year to the producers
of the country—to the farmers, the grocers, the build-
ers, the clothiers, the houseowners, the brickmakers,
the coal-miners, the editors and booksellers—of
$17,000,000. If these estimates be correct, we have
a direct loss next year to the country in this decrease of
immigration of over $30,000,000.
We cannot easily appreciate this loss until we take
some corresponding destruction of value in our wore
apparent wealth. People do not readily see loss and
gain on a great scale. It has taken centuries to make
the mass understand that a farthing or a penny duty
on a pound of some foreign article imported is an im-
mense lose to their own pockets.
Texas was thought a valuable acquisition by many in
its rich farms, though we paid a round price for it ; yet
the value of all the farms in Texas, and Arkansas be-
sides, is no greater than the value lost by this year's
decrease of iminigrat:on. New York and Pennsylvania
boast themselves of rich crops of wheat, but the whole
worth of their crops, if no greater than in 1850, would
be $2,000,000 short of the worth to us of those imint-
grslits who stay at home for a single year. It would
seem a fearful blow to the country, if by war, or fire,
or any calamity, our whole exported manufactures—all
these to cherish which we have been paying duties so
long—should suddenly be utterly destroyed ; yet the
loss would be $4,000,010 less, taking the value in 1854,
than the loss, this year, from impeded immigration. The
quick destruction of all the flour and corn and the pro-
ducts of agriculture, which we usually export, which
bring wealth to so many thousands, would be but a
little greater than the destruction, this year, of value
imported by the immigrants. If one-third of the cotton
'crop of last year had been lost, what lamentations would
have re-echoed irons one end of the Union to the other !
How many would have been bankrupt ; how many
would bare felt poorer ! Or, if the whole Indian corn
crop last year of New England, New York, New Jer-
sey' Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and the dis-
trict of Columbia bad perished, what a jeremiad of
mourning would have arisen ! To appoint a new fast
would have been the least which our governors could do.
Yet the first of these supposed losses is no greater, and
the last is less, than what we shall silently bear this
year from decreased immigration. Will not some good
Know-nothing governor institute a fast !
The country will feel the deep injury done to its pros-
perity by this diminution of immigration, even if it does
not see its source. Every man who owns tenement
houses, the shipbuilder, the shipowner, the cheap grocer,
the butcher, the railway companies, the thousands who
own stock in them, will feel it. The householder will
pay higher soon for his carpenter, his plumber, his
painter ; the house-mistress must after a time give more
for her cook or her laundress. The farmer must offer
higher wages to his men, and put a higher price on his
cattle, his milk, his potatoes, and wheat. Less new
land will be broken, and those who heist) invested in
Western lots must be disappointed in their plans. Busi-
ness at the great depots of commerce in the West will
be less active, because there are fewer hands to help it.
Not so many railroads, or canals, or steamboats, or flat-
boats will be built, because there is less travelling over
them, and less labour at hand to build them. The cost
of new cities, of schools, churches, stores, and &welling-
houses will be greatly increased, because there are
fewer workmen, at higher rates. Each professional man
must, after a time, feel this ; the client can pay less ;
the church-goer less ; the patient less. High wages to
labouring men are not in themselves necessarily an ad-
vantage : they depend on their relation to the value of
food, clothing, and means of living. With fewer hands
to labour in this country every article of living would be
more expensive, while the impeding and stoppage of busi-
ness would not be compensated by the higher rates to
the welling man. The wellbeing of each class in a
country like this depends on the well-being of every
other. If the workman gets $4 a-day who before got $2
be gains nothing if his bread and clothing cost double ;
aid he lcses, if there are just half the means for business
enterprises as there w ere before. There will be less
work for him, and all that he uses will cost more.
Under this falling off of immigration will cease some-
thing of that almost incredible spring of enterprise and
prosperity which has thus far characterised our commu-
nities. It will thus be seen that this wonderful progress
was not a mysterious blessing conferred by an unexplain-
able Providence, or altogether the fruit of the old Scan-
dinavian and Saxon blood. It will be found not alto-
gether due to our rich virgin soil, or our wide territory,
or our deep rivers, or entirely to our Puritan industry,
I or our Republican Government, or our isolated position.
We shall see, then, perhaps too late, or perhaps after a
deep depression of every branch of industry and com-
merce, that those squalid imbruted Irishmen, landing
in tatters or homespun ; these foreign, guttural, garlicy
Germans, with their nut-brown facas and broad shoul-
ders ; these conceited Englishmen and hairy French-
men, these out o'elbows Scotchmen and sharp-eyed
Welshmen and rag-picking Italians, all bad some part,
and no small part, in building up this grand structure of
our prosperity. We shall feel then—and that at no dis-
tant time—that we depend on them as well as they on
us ; that their bard-earned florins and sovereigns, their
tough hands and brawny muscles, even their very patience
of drudgery and disagreeable work, are all rich impor-
tations to our national wealth.
We shall then see in every dirty shipload poured forth
upon our docks, not so many intruders, or idlers, or
beggars, or dependents, but so much invaluable addition
to the riches of the country. And perhaps then, also,
as we have missed the ready ingenuity, the cheerful toil,
the natural waste, the social happiness of these foreign
artisans—as we have seen that our oountry was becom-
ing less a blessing to humanity—depressed and degraded
—than to the Anglo-Saxon races, we may be ready to
welcome the poor foreign labourer with a more humane
and a broader charity, feeling that both were placed by
Providence to be of good to each other.
If this result finally comes of our diminished immigra-1
tion then we shall not so much regret it.