Document – Josiah Strong on the Superiority of the Anglo-Sazon race, Excerpt from Our Country (1885)

Document

The Time Factor in the Problem

There are certain great focal points of history toward which the lines of past progress have converged, and from which have radiated the molding influences of the future. Such was the Incarnation, such was the German Reformation of the sixteenth century, and such are the closing years of the nineteenth century, second in importance to . . . only . . . the birth of Christ.

Many are not aware that we are living in extraordinary times. Few suppose that these years of peaceful prosperity, in which we are quietly developing a continent, are the pivot on which is turning the nation’s future. And fewer still imagine that the destinies of mankind, for centuries to come, can be seriously affected, much less determined, by the men of this generation in the United States. . . . Several years ago Professor Austin Phelps said: “Five hundred years of time in the process of the world’s salvation may depend on the next twenty years of United States history.”. . .

Perils—Immigration

Political optimism is one of the vices of the American people. There is a popular faith that “God takes care of children, fools, and the United States.” We deem ourselves a chosen people, and incline to the belief that the Almighty stands pledged to our prosperity. . . . Such optimism is as senseless as pessimism is faithless. The one is as foolish as the other is wicked.

Thoughtful men see perils on our national horizon. . . . America, as the land of promise to all the world, is the destination of the most remarkable migration of which we have any record. During the last ten years we have suffered a peaceful invasion by an army more than four times as vast as the estimated number of Goths and Vandals that . . . overwhelmed Rome. During the past hundred years fifteen million foreigners have made their homes in the United States, and three-quarters of them have come since 1850. . . .ⁱ

In view of the fact that Europe is able to send us six times as many immigrants during the next thirty years as during the thirty years past . . ., is it not reasonable to expect a rising tide of immigration unless Congress takes effective measures to check it? . . .

So immense a foreign element must have a profound influence on our national life and character. Immigration brings unquestioned benefits, but. . . [i]t . . . furnishes the soil which feeds the life of several of the most noxious growths of our civilization. . . .

Consider briefly the moral and political influence of immigration. . . . The typical immigrant is a European peasant, whose horizon has been narrow, whose moral and religious training has been meager or false, and whose ideas of life are low. Not a few belong to the pauper and criminal classes. . . . Moreover, immigration is demoralizing. . . . We have a good deal of piety in our churches that will not bear transportation. . . . American travelers in Europe often grant themselves license, on which, if at home, they would frown. Very many church-members, when they go west, seem to think . . . that the Ten Commandments are not binding west of the Missouri. Is it strange, then, that those who come from other lands, whose old associations are all broken and whose reputations are left behind, should sink to a lower moral level? . . .

Moreover, immigration not only furnishes the greater portion of our criminals, it is also seriously affecting the morals of the native population. It is disease and not health which is contagious. Most foreigners bring with them continental ideas of the Sabbath, and the result is sadly manifest in all our cities, where it is being transformed from a holy day into a holiday. But by far the most effective instrumentality for debauching popular morals is the liquor traffic, and this is chiefly carried on by foreigners. . . .

We can only glance at the political aspects of immigration. As we have already seen, it is immigration which has fed fat the liquor power; and there is a liquor vote. Immigration furnishes most of the victims of Mormonism; and there is a Mormon vote. Immigration is the strength of the Catholic church; and there is a Catholic vote. Immigration is the mother and nurse of American socialism; and there is to be a socialist vote. Immigration tends strongly to the cities, and gives to them their political complexion. And there is no more serious menace to our civilization than our rabble ruled cities. . . . Immigration has created the “German vote” and the “Irish vote.” . . . A mass of men but little acquainted with our institutions, who will act in concert and who are controlled largely by their appetites and prejudices, constitute a very paradise for demagogues.

[I]mmigration . . . has a [detrimental] . . . influence upon popular intelligence, for the percentage of illiteracy among the foreign-born population is thirty-eight per cent greater than among the native-born whites. Thus immigration complicates our moral and political problems by swelling our dangerous classes. . . . It goes without saying, that there is a dead-line of ignorance and vice in every republic, and when it is touched by the average citizen, free institutions perish. . . .

Our safety demands the assimilation of these strange populations, and the process of assimilation will become slower and more difficult as the proportion of foreigners increases. . . .

Foreigners are not coming to the United States in answer to any appetite of ours, controlled by an unfailing moral or political instinct. They naturally consult their own interests in coming, not ours. . . .

Notes

Review

1. 1. What were the evil influences of immigration, according to Strong, and what could be done about them? What stereotypes helped shape his views?

2. 2. Considering the evils that Strong associated with immigrants, what traits would Strong identify with a good American? What would he have had America look like?

3. 3. How would Strong “Americanize” immigrants?