The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1903-06-05
FACTORY OF AMERICANS.
Process Of Assimilation Progressing
Satisfactorily. i.

Process Of Assimilation Progressing
Satisfactorily. /.
Saturday Evening Post: Twenty
one years ago we touched high water
mark in immigration, with 1900 ar
rivals. 1t looks as IL that tremendous
record would be beaten this year. In
one day in April more than 10000 i'm
migrants landed at New York-the
greatest days work in the history OF
that port. One steamer brought 1,341
Scandinavians, another 1,4OO Italians,
another almost 1000 Greeks, Italians,
Arabs, Turks and Persians, a fourth
over $500 Poles and other Slavs, a
fifth 27O Scotchmen, a sixth 525
Greeks, Turks and Arabs, and a
seventh nearly 1900 Germans. In the
first eleven days Of April 41,200 i'm
migrants of all nationalities invaded
Ellis island.
No wonder some of our kind friends
across the Atlantic, looking at this
appalling mixture, believe that we
never can turn it's varied ingredients
into Americans. No such gigantic
amalgamation of diverse races has
ever been attempted since Caracalla
made Roman citizens of all the in
habftants OF his empire, and we may
say that never in the. history of the
world has such an undertaking been
successfully contaminated.
But that does not prove that we
shall fail. Indeed, there is every rea-
son to believe that we SHAH succeed.
We have been peculiarly fortunate
in our preparation for the mighty
work that is reversing the catastro-
phe of Babel. We have been a COM
posite people from the beginning.
The thirteen colonies we're settled by
Englishmen, Swedes, Germans,
Frenchmen and negroes. Before the
revolution substantially all these, ex-
cept the negroes, had been welded
into one homogeneous people, with a
common language and common po-
litical ideals. For fifty years after that
this people increased and solidified
with little admixture from immigra-
ton, so that when new currents be-
a to flow from Europe it was pre-
pared to absorb them. 1t was a quar-
ter of a century later still before the
first great flood broke upon us. That
deluge was Irish. In the SOS the prob
lem Of immigration was regarded as
an Irish problem. The Know-knoth-
ing protest was an anti-Irish move
ment. Irishmen captured u city gov
ernments, and our foreign policies
were swayed by the prejudices OF
the Irish vote"
But gradually the Irish freshet sub
sided. to be succeeded by a German
stream. A quarter of a million Ger
man immigrants entered the country
in a single year.. German newspapers.
theaters and churches sprang up and
fl%ourished. Had this continued there
might have been some reason to fear
that the kaiser's dream OF a huge
alien German colony in the United
States would be realized. But il
stopped in good time. Meanwhile the
earlier Irish immigrants and thell
children had become thorough Amerl
cans, and were helping the origina.
Americans to assimilate the Germans
The work was successfully accom-
plished, and now the Irish and Ger
mans both are parts of that wonder
full solvent that is A~mericanizing the
newer arrivals.
We are receiving a good many ltal
ians, Poles, H~ungarians and Russian
Jews at present, but it will be many
wears before their numbers compare
with those Of the Irish I'M Germans
who have been already successfully
assimilated. And by that time NJ
doubt the stream will slacken, as thu
former streams have done. Mean
while the races that have produced
Marconi and Tesla will still furthe'
enrich a stock which the mixture o
blood has made already the n
in the world.
a--..---- 0-A>e