Woman and the New Race | Page 9

been checked. On the other hand, immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe, including Russia and Finland, increased
175.4 per cent from 1900 to 1910. During that period, the slums of
Europe dumped their submerged inhabitants into America at a rate
almost double that of the preceding decade, and the flow was still
increasing at the time the census was taken. So it is more than likely
that when the next census is taken it will be found that following 1910
there was an even greater flow from Spain, Italy, Hungary, Austria,
Russia, Finland, and other countries where the iron hand of economic
and political tyrannies had crushed great populations into ignorance
and want. These peoples have not been in the United States long
enough to produce great families. The census of 1920 will in all
probability tell a story of a greater and more serious problem than did
the last.
Over one-fourth of all the immigrants over fourteen years of age,
admitted during the two decades preceding 1910, were illiterate. Of the
8,398,000 who arrived in the 1900-1910 period, 2,238,000 could not
read or write. There were 1,600,000 illiterate foreigners in the United

States when the 1910 census was taken. Do these elements give
promise of a better race? Are we doing anything genuinely constructive
to overcome this situation?
Two-thirds of the white foreign stock in the United States live in cities.
Four-fifths of the populations of Chicago and New York are of this
stock. More than two-thirds of the populations of Boston, Cleveland,
Detroit, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Newark, Jersey City,
Providence, Worcester, Scranton, Paterson, Fall River, Lowell,
Cambridge, Bridgeport, St. Paul, Minneapolis and San Francisco are of
other than native white ancestry. Of the fifty principal cities of the
United States there are only fourteen in which fifty per cent of the
population is of unmixed native white parentage.
Only one state in the Union--North Carolina--has less than one per cent
of the white foreign stock. New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Illinois,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana and Utah have more than
fifty per cent foreign stock. Eleven states, including those on the
Pacific Coast, have from 35 to 50 per cent. Maine, Ohio and Kansas
have from 25 to 35 per cent. Maryland, Indiana, Missouri and Texas
have from 15 to 25 per cent. These proportions are increasing rather
than decreasing, owing to the extraordinarily high birth rate of the
foreign strains.
A special analysis of 1915 vital statistics for certain states, in the World
Almanac for 1918, shows that foreign-born mothers gave birth to
nearly 62 per cent of the children born in Connecticut, nearly 58 per
cent in Massachusetts, nearly 33 per cent in Michigan, nearly 58 per
cent in Rhode Island, more than 43 per cent in New Hampshire, more
than 54 per cent in New York and more than 38 per cent in
Pennsylvania.
All these figures, be it remembered, fail to include foreign stock of the
second generation after landing. If the statistics for children who have
native parents but foreign-born grandparents, or who have one
foreign-born parent, were given, they would doubtless leave but a small
percentage of births from stocks native to the soil for several

generations.
Immigrants or their children constitute the majority of workers
employed in many of our industries. "Seven out of ten of those who
work in our iron and steel industries are drawn from this class," says
the National Geographic Magazine (February, 1917), "seven out of ten
of our bituminous coal miners belong to it. Three out of four who work
in packing towns were born abroad or are children of those who were
born abroad; four out of five of those who make our silk goods, seven
out of eight of those employed in woolen mills, nine out of ten of those
who refine our petroleum, and nineteen out of twenty of those who
manufacture our sugar are immigrants or the children of immigrants."
And it might have shown a similarly high percentage of those in the
ready-made clothing industries, railway and public works construction
of the less skilled sort, and a number of others.
That these foreigners who have come in hordes have brought with them
their ignorance of hygiene and modern ways of living and that they are
handicapped by religious superstitions is only too true. But they also
bring in their hearts a desire for freedom from all the tyrannies that
afflict the earth. They would not be here if they did not bear within
them the hardihood of pioneers, a courage of no mean order. They have
the simple faith that in America they will find equality, liberty and an
opportunity for a decent livelihood. And they have something else. The
cell plasms of these peoples are freighted